Page:Nigger Heaven (1926).pdf/79

 dow. It was no longer raining, she perceived, and she could therefore easily walk the short distance to the Albrights' apartment.

It was shortly after nine when Hester opened the door for her—the Albrights did not keep a servant.

Rest your wrap, Mary, Hester adjured her and then led her guest into the tiny sitting-room where Mrs. Albright, a withered, wrinkled, old woman with a hooked nose, waved her ear-trumpet sceptre from her arm-chair throne. On the other side of the cheerful, open fire sat Orville Snodes, who was something or other at the Harlem Y. M. C. A. Mary detested him, with no more personal reason for doing so than the fact that he bored her. The mere sight of his round, brown, empty face, so like an Ethiopian moon, exasperated her.

How are you, Mrs. Albright? Mary greeted the old lady.

How have you been? Hester's ancient mother croaked.

Mary let her relaxed palm fall limply into Orville Snodes's hand.

Mrs. Albright was the widow of a building-contractor and it had always been understood—although no one had ever heard Mrs. Albright say so directly—that she felt she had married beneath her, despite the fact that she owed her present easy mode of living to this curious expression of humility. At any rate, whatever might be her state of mind in regard to this episode, she had made at least one