the door wider for her to come in.

“Miss Mayfield is at home. I’ll let her know that you are here if you will wait a few moments.”

She was in a wide hall now from which an open staircase rose to rooms above. The hall was very cheerful with white woodwork and grey walls hung with etchings in narrow black frames. Uninvited Ruth perched hesitatingly on the edge of a Chippendale chair and waited. The coloured man walked to the far end of the hall, opened a door there and called:

“Amy, come here, you.”

Amy came, a round, short, black woman of the type most familiar to Ruth.

13To her the man evidently explained the situation, but his soft voice did not carry to Ruth’s end of the hall; not so the voice of Amy. Ruth could hear her replies quite plainly.

13

“Mis’ Mayfiel’ a’n yit had her breakfus’—I’se jes now makin’ de tray—ef you sez so I’ll tell her, but dis a’n no hour to be talkin’ to Mis’ Mayfiel’.”

Both Amy and the man disappeared through the door and soon Amy emerged again carrying a breakfast tray. She went past Ruth and up the stairs. Ruth was growing impatient and rather offended. Of course she should have sent a wire, but even so, Gloria Mayfield was her aunt and she should have been taken to her at once. Evidently her aunt ate breakfast in bed. Perhaps she was an invalid like her mother. Ruth hoped not. Evidently too she had a lot more money than Ruth had supposed. Her impatience was not alleviated when Amy came down the stairs again without speaking to her. It was unbearable that she should sit here in the hall of her aunt’s house, ignored like a book agent. In another moment the man had reappeared.

“Miss Mayfield will see you as soon as she can dress, Miss, and would you like breakfast in your room or downstairs?”

He had picked up Ruth’s bag as he spoke.

“I’ve had breakfast,” said Ruth. She had indeed eaten breakfast in Grand Central Station. It was only seven o’clock in the morning when she arrived in New York, and that had seemed rather an early 14hour for even a relative to drop into her aunt’s home unexpectedly.

14

She followed the servant up the stairs, mentally commenting on how she hated “educated niggers.” Yet she had to 

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