"Yes, I can never count on being fit for much in the morning; but to-day I am abroad early. Shall I find the child?"
"Ethan has just gone to school. Pa took him to-day."
Miss Tallmadge's embarrassment seemed to rouse in Mrs. Gano's breast a sentiment to which it was commonly a stranger. She was curious. Ought she not to know something about this woman who stood in the relation of mother to Ethan? What was her life like? What were her interests?
"I have always heard," the visitor said, as they walked along Somerset, and through Beacon to Tremont Street--"always heard what admirable house-keepers the New England women are. Do you do your own marketing?"
"This is a good time for shopping, before the crowded mid-day. I must look for a shawl of some kind."
"I would be glad to show you the best place for such things, but to-day I--I have a most important engagement."
She paused near a stationer's. On the right a staircase led from the street to the floor above. Several ladies bustled past, nodding good-morning to Miss Tallmadge, and disappearing up these stairs. Mrs. Gano's keen eyes explored the precincts. A small placard in the entry stated in white letters on lacquered tin: "Ladies' Domestic Philanthropic Society (Colored Registry Office)."
"H'm!" she said, not seeming to see the nervous hand seeking farewell. "Colored! What color?"
"I should probably say negro. But I've heard they like to call themselves colored. Seems a curious taste. Always suggests variegated to me."
"That is not how we mean it," said Miss Tallmadge solemnly, making way for more ladies who swarmed up the staircase. "We are a little group of people working on purely humanitarian principles, finding succor and employment for the destitute, thrown out of work by--"
"Yes; we know by whom." Then, with a misleading geniality: "This idea of restitution seems to me very right and proper."
Miss Tallmadge's face betrayed perplexity. A shivering little quadroon girl crept up the stairs behind a coal-black old man.
"It is too difficult, perhaps, to make plain our point of view," said Miss Hannah, with quiet dignity, "otherwise I should feel it my duty while you are in Boston to show you--"
"Have you the right," interrupted her visitor, "to bring a stranger to these colored meetings?"