Stanton, Sandy’s Kansas home, was back in the darkness, and the train sped towards the great center where all the small-town boys in the whole Middle West wanted to go.

“I’m going now!” thought Sandy. “Chicago now!”

A few weeks past he had gone to see Sister Johnson, who was quite feeble with the rheumatism. As she sat in the corner of her kitchen smoking a corn-cob pipe, no longer able to wash clothes, but still able to keep up a rapid flow of conversation, she told him all the news.

“Tom, he’s still at de bank keepin’ de furnace goin’ an’ sort o’ handy man. . . . Willie-Mae, I ’spects you knows, is figurin’ on gettin’ married next month to Mose Jenkins, an’ I tells her she better stay single, young as she is, but she ain’t payin’ me no mind. Umn-unh! Jest let her go on! . . . Did you heerd Sister Whiteside’s daughter done brought her third husband home to stay wid her ma—an’ five o’ her first husband’s chillens there too? Gals ain’t got no regard for de old folks. Sister Whiteside say if she warn’t a Christian in her heart, she don’t believe she could stand it! . . . I tells Willie-Mae she better not bring no husbands here to stay wid me—do an’ I’ll run him out! These mens ought be shame o’ dem-selves comin’ livin’ on de womenfolks.”

As the old woman talked, Sandy, thinking of his grandmother, gazed out of the window towards the house next door, where he had lived with Aunt Hager. Some small children were playing in the back yard, running and yelling. They belonged to the Southern family to whom Tempy had rented the place.... Madam de Carter, who still owned the second house, had been made a national grand officer in the women’s division of the lodge and many of the members of the order now had on the walls of their homes a large picture of her dressed in full regalia, inscribed: “Yours in His Grace,” and signed: “Madam Fannie Rosalie de Carter.”

“Used to be just plain old Rose Carter befo’ she got so important,” said Sister Johnson, explaining her neighbor’s lengthy name. “All these womens dey mammy named Jane an’ Mary an’ Cora, soon’s dey gets a little somethin’, dey changes dey names to Janette or Mariana or Corina or somethin’ mo’ flowery than what dey had. Willie-Mae say she gwine change her’n to Willetta-Mayola, an’ I tole her if she do, I’ll beat her—don’t care how old she is!”

Sandy liked to listen to the rambling talk of old colored folks. “I guess there won’t be many like that in Chicago,” he thought, as he doubled back his long legs under the green-plush seat of the day coach. “I better try to get to sleep—there’s a long ways to go until morning.”

Although it was not yet June, the heat was terrific when, with the old bags that Tempy had given him, Sandy got out of the dusty train in Chicago and walked the length of the sheds into the station. He caught sight of his mother waiting in the crowd, a fatter and much older woman than he had remembered her to be; and at first she didn’t know him among the stream of people coming from the train. Perhaps, unconsciously, she was looking for the little boy she left in Stanton; but Sandy was taller than Annjee now and he looked quite a young man in his blue serge suit with long trousers. His mother threw both plump arms around him and hugged and kissed him for a long time.