“Yes, m’am,” said Annjee stirring a spoonful of flour into the frying-pan, making a thick brown gravy.

“Old thin toast,” muttered Annjee when Mrs. Rice had gone back to the front. “Always bothering round the kitchen! Here ’tis lodge-meeting night—dinner late anyhow—and she coming telling me to stop and make toast for the old man! He ain’t too indigestible to eat biscuits like the rest of ’em. . . . White folks sure is a case!” She laid three slices of bread on top of the stove. “So spoiled with colored folks waiting on ’em all their days! Don’t know what they’ll do in heaven, ’cause I’m gonna sit down up there myself.”

Annjee took the biscuits, light and brown, and placed some on a pink plate she had warmed. She carried them, with the butter and jelly, into the dining-room. Then she took the steak from the warmer, dished up the vegetables into gold-rimmed serving-dishes, and poured the gravy, which smelled deliciously onion-flavored.

“Gee, I’m hungry,” said the child, with his eyes on the big steak ready to go in to the white people.

“Well, just wait,” replied his mother. “You come to work, not to eat. . . . Whee! but it’s hot today!” She wiped her wet face and put on a large white bungalow apron that had been hanging behind the door. Then she went with the iced tea and a pitcher of water into the dining-room, struck a Chinese gong, and came back to the kitchen to get the dishes of steaming food, which she carried in to the table.

It was some time before she returned from waiting on the table; so Sandy, to help her, began to scrape out the empty pans and put them to soak in the sink. He ate the stewed corn that had stuck in the bottom of one, and rubbed a piece of bread in the frying-pan where the gravy had been. His mother came out with the water-pitcher, broke some ice for it, and returned to the dining-room where Sandy could hear laughter, and the clinking of spoons in tea-glasses, and women talking. When Annjee came back into the kitchen, she took four custards from the ice-box and placed them on gold-rimmed plates.

“They’re about through,” she said to her son. “Sit down and I’ll fix you up.”

Sandy was very hungry and he hoped Mrs. Rice’s family hadn’t eaten all the steak, which had looked so good with its brown gravy and onions.

Shortly, his mother returned carrying the dishes that had been filled with hot food. She placed them on the kitchen-table in front of Sandy, but they were no longer full and no longer hot. The corn had thickened to a paste, and the potatoes were about gone; but there was still a ragged piece of steak left on the platter.

“Don’t eat it all,” said Annjee warningly. “I want to take some home to your father.”

The bell rang in the dining-room. Annjee went through the swinging door and returned bearing a custard that had been but little touched.