Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/42

38 because of it. My mother was on my side and we won out but after a long hard fight. And now that I have my degree at college I must go back and work on the farm to pay for it all."

"Do you mind much?"

"Well, I can't say I am hilarious over the prospect but I do want to see my mother and be some help to her. I have known all the time the day of reckoning was coming and now that it has come I am resigned. The farm is needing me too. My father is apt to leave things very much in the hands of the colored people on the place."

"Do you like colored people?" asked the girl. "I have known so few of them myself I don't know whether I like them or not but Daddy said I must try to like them because my own first father had so much feeling and sympathy for them."

"I like the good ones but the ones on our place are not very fine specimens of the race. There is an old Aunt Peachy who is evil beyond belief. She has always lived at 'The Hedges' and was my father's nurse. She and her descendants are a bad lot but it is out of the question to get rid of them. I am going to try to reform them. There is a dear old colored woman who lives across the river from us. She