“James, you must get up on time in this house. Breakfast has been ready twenty minutes. I can’t come upstairs every morning to call you. You are old enough now to wake yourself and you must learn to do so⁠—you’ve too far to walk to school to lie abed.”

Sandy tumbled out. Tempy left the room so that he would be free to dress, and soon he came downstairs to breakfast.

He had never had a room of his own before. He had never even slept in a room alone, but here his aunt had given him a small chamber on the second floor which had a window that looked out into a tidy backyard where there was a brick walk running to the back gate. The room, which was very clean, contained only the bed, one chair, and a dresser. There was, too, a little closet in which to hang clothes, but Sandy did not have many to put in it.

The thing that impressed him most about the second floor was the bathroom. He had never lived where there was running water indoors. And in this room, too, everything was so spotlessly clean that Sandy was afraid to move lest he disturb something or splash water on the wall.

When he came downstairs for breakfast, he found the table set for two. Mr. Siles, being in the railway postal service, was out on a trip. The grapefruit was waiting as Sandy slid shyly into his place opposite the ash-brown woman who had become his guardian since his grandma’s death. She bowed her head to say a short grace; then they ate.

“Have you been accustomed to drinking milk in the mornings?” Tempy asked as they were finishing the meal. “If you have, the milkman can leave another bottle. Young people should have plenty of milk.”

“Yes’m, I’d like it, but we only had coffee at home.”

“You needn’t say ‘yes’m’ in this house. We are not used to slavery talk here. If you like milk, I’ll get it for you.⁠ ⁠… Now, how are your clothes? I see your stocking has a hole in it, and one pants-leg is hanging.”

“It don’t stay fastened.”

“It doesn’t, James! I’ll buy you some more pants tomorrow. What else do you need?”

Sandy told her, and in a few days she took him to Wertheimer’s, the city’s largest store, and outfitted him completely. And, as they shopped, she informed him that she was the only colored woman in town who ran a bill there.

“I want white people to know that Negroes have a little taste; that’s why I always trade at good shops.⁠ ⁠… And if you’re going to live with me, you’ll have to learn to do things right, too.”

The tearful letter that came from Annjee when she heard of her mother’s death said that Toledo was a very difficult place to get work in, and that she had no money to send railroad fare for Sandy, but that she would try to send for him as soon as she could. Jimboy was working on a lake steamer and was seldom home, and she couldn’t have Sandy with her anyway until they got a nicer place to stay; so would Tempy please keep him a little while?

By return post Tempy replied that if Annjee had any sense, she would let Sandy remain in Stanton, where he could get a good education, and not be following after his worthless father all over the country. Mr. Siles and she had no children, and Sandy seemed like a quiet, decent child, smart in his classes. Colored people needed to encourage talent so that the white race would realize Negroes weren’t all mere guitar-players and housemaids. And Sandy could be a credit if he were raised right. Of course, Tempy knew he hadn’t had the correct environment to begin with⁠—living with Jimboy and Harriett and going to a Baptist church, but undoubtedly he could be trained. He was young. “And I think it would be only fair to the boy that you let him stay with us, because, Annjee, you are certainly not the person to bring him up as he should be reared.” The letter was signed: “Your sister, Tempy,” and written properly with pen and ink.

So it happened that Sandy came to live with Mr. and Mrs. Arkins Siles, for that was the name by which his aunt and uncle were known in the Negro society of the town. Mr. Siles was a mail-clerk on the railroad⁠—a position that colored people considered a high one because you were working for “Uncle Sam.” He was a paste-colored man of forty-eight who had inherited three houses from his father.

Tempy, when she married, had owned houses too, one of which had been willed her by Mrs. Barr-Grant, for whom she had worked for years as personal maid. She had acquired her job while yet in high school, and Mrs. Barr-Grant, who travelled a great deal in the interest of woman suffrage and prohibition, had taken Tempy east with her. On their return to Stanton she allowed the colored maid to take charge of her home, where she also employed a cook and a parlor girl. Thus was the mistress left free to write pamphlets and prepare lectures on the various evils of the world standing in need of correction.

Tempy pleased Mrs. Barr-Grant by being prompt and exact in obeying orders and by appearing to worship her Puritan intelligence. In truth Tempy did worship her mistress, for the colored girl found that by following Mrs. Barr-Grant’s early directions she had become an expert housekeeper; by imitating her manner of speech she had acquired a precise flow of language; and by reading her books she had become interested in things that most Negro girls never thought about. Several times the mistress had remarked to her maid: “You’re so smart and such a good, clean, quick little worker, Tempy, that it’s too bad you aren’t white.” And Tempy had taken this to heart, not as an insult, but as a compliment.

When the white lady died, she left one of her small houses to her maid as a token of appreciation for faithful services. By dint of saving, and of having resided with her mistress where there had been no living expenses, Tempy had managed to buy another house, too. When Mr. Siles asked her to be his wife, everybody said it was a fine match, for both owned property, both were old enough to know what they wanted, and both were eminently respectable.⁠ ⁠… Now they prospered together.

Tempy no longer worked out, but stayed home, keeping house, except that she went each month to collect her rents and those of her husband. She had a woman to do the laundry and help with the cleaning, but Tempy herself did the cooking, and all her meals were models of economical preparation. Just enough food was prepared each time for three people. Sandy never had a third helping of dessert in her house. No big pots of black-eyed peas and pigtails scented her front hall, either. She got her recipes from The Ladies’ Home Journal⁠—and she never bought a watermelon.

White people were forever picturing colored folks with huge slices of watermelon in their hands. Well, she was one colored woman who did not like them! Her favorite fruits were tangerines and grapefruit, for Mrs. Barr-Grant had always eaten those, and Tempy had admired Mrs. Barr-Grant more than anybody else⁠—more, of course, than she had admired Aunt Hager, who spent her days at the washtub, and had loved watermelon.

Colored people certainly needed to come up in the world, Tempy thought, up to the level of white people⁠—dress like white people, talk like white people, think like white people⁠—and then they would no longer be called “niggers.”

In Tempy this feeling was an emotional reaction, born of white admiration, but in Mr. Siles, who shared his wife’s views, the same attitude was born of practical thought. The whites had the money, and if Negroes wanted any, the quicker they learned to be like the whites, the better. Stop being lazy, stop singing all the time, stop attending revivals, and learn to get the dollar⁠—because money buys everything, even the respect of white people.

Blues and spirituals Tempy and her husband hated because they were too Negro. In their house Sandy dared not sing a word of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” for what had darky slave songs to do with respectable people? And ragtime belonged in the Bottoms with the sinners. (It was ironically strange that the Bottoms should be the only section of Stanton where Negroes and whites mingled freely on equal terms.) That part of town, according to Tempy, was lost to God, and the fact that she had a sister living there burned like a hidden cancer in her breast. She never mentioned Harriett to anyone.

Tempy’s friends were all people of standing in the darker world⁠—doctors, schoolteachers, a dentist, a lawyer, a hairdresser. And she moved among these friends as importantly as Mrs. Barr-Grant had moved among a similar group in the white race. Many of them had had washwomen for mothers and day-laborers for fathers; but none ever spoke of that. And while Aunt Hager lived, Tempy, after getting her position with Mrs. Barr-Grant, was seldom seen with the old woman. After her marriage she was even more ashamed of her family connections⁠—a little sister running wild, and another sister married for the sake of love⁠—Tempy could never abide Jimboy, or understand why Annjee had taken up with a rounder from the South. One’s family as a topic of conversation, however, was not popular in high circles, for too many of Stanton’s dark society folks had sprung from humble family trees and low black bottoms.

“But back in Washington, where I was born,” said Mrs. Doctor Mitchell once, “we really have blood! All the best people at the capital come from noted ancestry⁠—Senator Bruce, John M. Langston, Governor Pinchback, Frederick Douglass. Why, one of our colored families on their white side can even trace its lineage back to George Washington!⁠ ⁠… O, yes, we have a background! But, of course, we are too refined to boast about it.”

Tempy thought of her mother then and wished that black Aunt Hager had not always worn her apron in the streets, uptown and everywhere! Of course, it was clean and white and seemed to suit the old lady, but aprons weren’t worn by the best people. When Tempy was in the hospital for an operation shortly after her marriage, they wouldn’t let Hager enter by the front door⁠—and Tempy never knew whether it was on account of her color or the apron! The Presbyterian Hospital was prejudiced against Negroes and didn’t like them to use the elevator, but certainly her mother should not have come there in an apron!

Well, Aunt Hager had meant well, Tempy thought, even if she didn’t dress right. And now this child, Sandy⁠—James was his correct name! At that first breakfast they ate together, she asked him if he had a comb and brush of his own.

“No’m, I ain’t,” said Sandy.

“I haven’t,” she corrected him. “I certainly don’t want my white neighbors to hear you saying ‘ain’t’.⁠ ⁠… You’ve come to live with me now and you must talk like a gentleman.”