Page:Nigger Heaven (1926).pdf/193

 tively easy for Mary, easy enough, no doubt, even for his father. They couldn't understand how hard it had been for him. They couldn't understand that he had tried. Had he tried? His mind began to wander. What was it all worth, anyway? Why couldn't he fall in line and just be a Nigger, like the rest of the "good" Niggers! . . . And Mary didn't like cabarets and would be disagreeable every time he went to one, and she would be annoyed if he attended prize-fights—he made a mental note that he would see Leanshanks Pescod's next combat. . . and girls, golden-brown girls. What would Mary. . . ?

His landlady rapped on the door. Welcome Fox was a middle-aged woman who had been born on a Tennessee plantation and had come North with her husband, at that time working as a coachman for a family which had moved to New York. He had, in time, drifted away from this connection to drive one of the Victorias that rolled in the old days up and down Fifth Avenue. Two years ago he had died, leaving his wife to care for their dead daughter's two children. Mrs. Fox had always been thrifty, however, and she was accustomed to hard work. In her earlier days she had added to her income by taking in washing and doing simple dressmaking. Now she paid the rent of her apartment by letting some of the rooms. Occasionally, too, she worked out by the day. When she was at home