There was another colored porter on this, and he was very polite and affable.
"Yes, Miss; certainly I'll fetch you a lunch--plenty of time." And he did. It did not look clean but Zora was ravenous.
The white smoker now had few occupants, but the white train crew proceeded to use the colored coach as a lounging-room and sleeping-car. There was no passenger except Zora. They took off their coats, stretched themselves on the seats, and exchanged jokes; but Zora was too tired to notice much, and she was dozing wearily when she felt a touch on the arm and found the porter in the seat beside her with his arm thrown familiarly behind her along the top of the back. She rose abruptly to her feet and he started up.
"I beg pardon," he said, grinning.
Zora sat slowly down as he got up and left. She determined to sleep no more. Yet a vast vision sank on her weary spirit--the vision of a dark cloud that dropped and dropped upon her, and lay as lead along her straining shoulders. She must lift it, she knew, though it were big as a world, and she put her strength to it and groaned as the porter cried in the ghostly morning light: "Atlanta! All change!"
Away yonder at the school near Toomsville, Miss Smith sat waiting for the coming of Zora, absently attending the duties of the office. Dark little heads and hands bobbed by and soft voices called: "Miss Smith, I wants a penny pencil."
"Miss Smith, is yo' got a speller fo' ten cents?"
"Miss Smith, mammy say please lemme come to school this week and she'll sho' pay Sata'day."
Yet the little voices that summoned her back to earth were less clamorous than in other years, for the school was far from full, and Miss Smith observed the falling off with grave eyes. This condition was patently the result of the cotton corner and the subsequent manipulation. When cotton rose, the tenants had already sold their cotton; when cotton fell the landlords squeezed the rations and lowered the wages. When cotton rose again, up went the new Spring rent contracts. So it was that the bewildered black serf dawdled in listless inability to understand. The Cresswells in their new wealth, the Maxwells and Tollivers in the new pinch of poverty, stretched long arms to gather in the tenants and their children. Excuse after excuse came to the school.
"I can't send the chilluns dis term, Miss Smith; dey has to work."
"Mr. Cresswell won't allow Will to go to school this term."
"Mr. Tolliver done put Sam in the field."