I wrote home to Georgia, to the white people who owned the house in which Caroline had lived, asking them to take care of her boy Lawrence until I should come in October.  When we came back to Jamaica Plain in the fall, I was asked to decide what I should do in regard to this boy.  Mrs. Reed wanted me to stay with her, and promised to help pay for the care of the boy in Georgia.  Of course, she said, I could not expect to find positions if I had a child with me.  As an inducement to remain in my present place and leave the boy in Georgia, I was promised provision for my future days, as long as I should live.  It did not take me long to decide what I should do.  The last time I had seen my sister, a little over a year before she died, she had said, when I was leaving, “I don’t expect ever to see you again, but if I die I shall rest peacefully in my grave, because I know you will take care of my child.”

I left Jamaica Plain and took a room on Village Street for the two or three weeks until my departure for the South.  During this time, a lady came to the house to hire a girl for her home in Wellesley Hills.  The girl who was offered the place would not go.  I volunteered to accept the position temporarily, and went at once to the beautiful farm.  At the end of a week, a man and his wife had been engaged, and I was to leave the day after their arrival.  These new servants, however, spoke very little English, and I had to stay through the next week until the new ones were broken in.  After leaving there I started for Georgia, reaching there at the end of five days, at five o’clock.

I took a carriage and drove at once to the house where Lawrence was being taken care of.  He was playing in the yard, and when he saw me leave the carriage he ran and threw his arms around my neck and cried for joy.  I stayed a week in this house, looking after such things of my sister’s as had not been already stored.  One day I had a headache, and was lying down in the cook’s room.  Lawrence was in the dining-room with the cook’s little girl, and the two got into a quarrel, in the course of which my nephew struck the cook’s child.  The cook, in her anger, chased the boy with a broom, and threatened to give him a good whipping at all costs.  Hearing the noise, I came out into the yard, and when Lawrence saw me he ran to me for protection.  I interceded for him, and promised he should get into no more trouble.  We went at once to a neighbor’s house for the night.  The next day I got a room in the yard of a house belonging to some white people.  Here we stayed two weeks.  The only return I was asked to make for the room was to weed the garden.  Lawrence and I dug out some weeds and burned them, but came so near setting fire to the place that we were told we need not dig any more weeds, but that we might have the use of the room so long as we cared to stay.

In about a week and a half more we got together such things as we wanted to keep and take away with us.