When Sandy returned with the pipe, the conversation had shifted to the deaths in the colored community. “Hager, folks dyin’ right an’ left already dis winter. We’s had such a bad fall, dat’s de reason why. You know dat no-’count Jack Smears passed away last Sunday. Dey had his funeral yesterday an’ I went. Good thing he belonged to de lodge, too, else he’d been buried in de po’-field, ’cause he ain’t left even de copper cents to put on his eyes. Lodge beared his funeral bill, but I heard more’n one member talkin’ ’bout how dey was puttin’ a ten-dollar nigger in a hundred-collar coffin! . . . An’ his wife were at de funeral. Yes, sir! A hussy! After she done left him last year wid de little chillens to take care of, an’ she runnin’ round de streets showin’ off. Dere she sot, big as life, in front wid de moaners, long black veil on her face and done dyed her coat black, an’ all de time Reverend Butler been preachin’ ’bout how holy Jack were, she turn an’ twist an’ she coughed an’ she whiffled an’ blowed an’ she wiped—tryin’ her best to cry an’ couldn’t, deceitful as she is! Then she jest broke out to screamin’, but warn’t a tear in her eye; makin’ folks look at her, dat’s all, ’cause she ain’t cared nothin’ ’bout Jack. She been livin’ in de Bottoms since last Feb’ary wid a young bell-hop ain’t much older’n her own son, Bert!”

“Do Jesus!” said Hager. “Some womens is awful.”

“Worse’n dat,” said Sister Johnson. . . . “Lawdy! Listen at dat sleet beatin’ on dese winders! Sho gwine be a real winter! An’ how time do pass. Ain’t but t’ree mo’ weeks till Christmas!”

“Truth!” said Sandy’s grandmother. “An’ we ain’t gwine have no money a-tall. Ain’t no mo’n got through payin’ ma taxes good, an’ de interest on ma mortgage, when Annjee get sick here! Lawd, I tells you, po’ colored womens have it hard!”

“Sho do!” said Sister Johnson, sucking at her pipe as she ironed. “How long you been had this house, Sis Williams?”

“Fo’ nigh on forty years, even sence Cudge an’ me come here from Montgomery. An’ I been washin’ fo’ white folks ever’ week de Lawd sent sence I been here, too. Bought this house washin’, and made as many payments myself as Cudge come near; an’ raised ma chillens washin’; an’ when Cudge taken sick an’ laid on his back for mo’n a year, I taken care o’ him washin’; an’ when he died, paid de funeral bill washin’, cause he ain’t belonged to no lodge. Sent Tempy through de high school and edicated Annjee till she marry that onery pup of a Jimboy, an’ Harriett till she left home. Yes, sir. Washin’, an’ here I is with me arms still in de tub! . . . But they’s one mo’ got to go through school yet, an’ that’s ma little Sandy. If de Lawd lets me live, I’s gwine make a edicated man out o’ him. He’s gwine be another Booker T. Washington.” Hager turned a voluminous white petticoat on the ironing-board as she carefully pressed its embroidered hem. “I ain’t never raised no boy o’ ma own yet, so I wants this one o’ Annjee’s to ’mount to something. I wants him to know all they is to know, so’s he can help this black race o’ our’n to come up and see de light and take they places in de world. I wants him to be a Fred Douglass leadin’ de people, that’s what, an’ not followin’ in de tracks o’ his good-for-nothin’ pappy, worthless an’ wanderin’ like Jimboy is.”