Page:A Study in Colour - Augusta Zelia Fraser.pdf/49

38 to a confession of failure among the black girls, little Angelina felt it keenly.

Her woolly head was indeed at this time her worst trouble, for otherwise her small life was happy enough.

Her mother, Mrs. Orinthia Hall, was a decent black woman. Her father was black also. Her mother had consented to marry him rather late in life after a somewhat chequered past; and Angelina was her only black child.

Orinthia had two other daughters, before her marriage, but they were both light-coloured, and considered themselves very great ladies indeed, especially "Mrs. Thomas," the eldest, who was a mulatto.

Although both married themselves when it occurred, Orinthia's tardy alliance to a black man had been a great grievance to them, and the subsequent appearance of their little black half-sister had aggravated the matter. If their mother's marriage in itself had been, in their eyes, a slight, the woolly-haired Angelina was an additional and wholly gratuitous insult.

"What for you, Orinthia, want to marry dat black man ?" said the