XXVIII

By and by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started for downstairs; but as I come to the girls’ room the door was open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she’d been packing things in it⁠—getting ready to go to England. But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in there and says:

ā€œMiss Mary Jane, you can’t a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can’t⁠—most always. Tell me about it.ā€

So she done it. And it was the niggers⁠—I just expected it. She said the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn’t know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn’t ever going to see each other no more⁠—and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:

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