“Fourteen dollars.”

“Pshaw! Is that all? I can give you that much myself,” Harriett said. “We’ve got straight bookings until Christmas—then cabaret work’s good around here. Bill and I can always make the dough—and you go to school.”

“I want to, Aunt Harrie,” Sandy said, suddenly content.

“Yea, old man,” put in Billy. “And I’ll shoot you a little change myself—to play the numbers,” he added, winking.

“Well,” Annjee began, “what about . . .”

But Harriett ignored Billy’s interjection as well as her sister’s open mouth. “Running an elevator for fourteen dollars a week and losing your education!” she cried. “Good Lord! Annjee, you ought to be ashamed, wanting him to keep that up. This boy’s gotta get ahead—all of us niggers are too far back in this white man’s country to let any brains go to waste! Don’t you realize that? . . . You and me was foolish all right, breaking mama’s heart, leaving school, but Sandy can’t do like us. He’s gotta be what his grandma Hager wanted him to be—able to help the black race, Annjee! You hear me? Help the whole race!”

“I want to,” Sandy said.

“Then you’ll stay in school!” Harriett affirmed, still looking at Annjee. “You surely wouldn’t want him stuck in an elevator for ever—just to help you, would you, sister?”

“I reckon I wouldn’t,” Annjee murmured, shaking her head.

“You know damn well you wouldn’t,” Harriett concluded. And, before they parted, she slipped a ten-dollar bill into her nephew’s hand.

“For your books,” she said.

When Sandy and his mother started home, it was very late, but in a little Southern church in a side street, some old black worshippers were still holding their nightly meeting. High and fervently they were singing:

By an’ by when de mawnin’ comes,
Saints an’ sinners all are gathered home....

As the deep volume of sound rolled through the open door, Annjee and her son stopped to listen.

“It’s like Stanton,” Sandy said, “and the tent in the Hickory Woods.”

“Sure is!” his mother exclaimed. “Them old folks are still singing—even in Chicago! . . . Funny how old folks like to sing that way, ain’t it?”

“It’s beautiful!” Sandy cried—for, vibrant and steady like a stream of living faith, their song filled the whole night:

An’ we’ll understand it better by an’ by!