She came back
in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush on her cheeks, and
ten years lifted from her shoulders.
"You must have a cup of tea before you go," she said, "and a sugar
cake."
She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small Negro girl
about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with thumb in
mouth and bulging eyes.
Azalea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill,
a dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two
pieces, and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper. It
was one of the bills I had given the piratical Negro--there was no doubt
about it.
"Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy," she said, handing the
girl the dollar bill, "and get a quarter of a pound of tea--the kind he
always sends me--and ten cents worth of sugar cakes. Now, hurry. The
supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted," she explained to
me.
Impy left by the back way. Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet
had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek--I was sure it was
hers--filled the hollow house. Then the deep, gruff tones of an angry
man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and unintelligible
words.
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