aid much emphasis and ended by asking for
advice regarding the best way to earn her living.

Tom looked at her soberly and yet somewhere back she felt that there was
a hint of a smile.

"You haven't told me about your feller," he declared after she had
finished.

During her recital Hertha had been looking straight ahead at the pulpit
with its reading-desk and red plush cushion on which rested a huge
Bible. Now she turned in her seat and addressed herself directly to Tom.

"What do you know about him?" she asked.

"Nothin'," Tom replied, the smile that Hertha had felt in the background
coming to the surface. "It wouldn't be anything but natural if you had a
dozen. But Bob told me you had one."

"Bob! How did you have time enough to exchange confidences like that?"

"There weren't any exchange. Before he'd finished the car come. I reckon
he was planning to have me give a wave of my hand and send the feller
off the earth. What did you give him, Hertha? The kid thought I was a
magician."

"Oh, I just told him a story," Hertha answered vaguely, "and used your
name. But what did Bob mean? Didn't he like Dick?"

"Jealous, I reckon."

Hertha laughed. "Well, I'll tell you about him," she declared, "I was
coming to him when I spoke."

Playing with her handkerchief, her mouth trembling sometimes as she
talked, she seemed to Tom both nervous and tired. He had not thought she
could so lose her old serenity. But he listened attentively as she told
of her meetings with Dick in the library and at the park. As her story
continued he grew to like the young southerner for his considerate and
unselfish devotion. Looking at Hertha's too slender figure and at her
restless hands he felt, as Dick so often felt, that she was not one who
should be forced to battle with the world. And he knew, as Dick could
not know, her utter loneliness. When he learned that the man was from
Georgia he was not altogether unprepared for the close of Hertha's
story, the quick breath and furious blush that came with the halting
effort to tell of her lover's attitude toward the colored race.

"Oh, I can guess," he said tolerantly, coming to her rescue. "I've heard
that kind of man talk. Colored folks are all niggers to him and he ain't
got no use for 'em. But lawdy, that don't amount to much."

"But I think it does, Tom," Hertha said tremulously. "When he talks like
that, I hate him."

"Have you told him about yourself, Sister?" Tom inquired.

He