Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/43

 When shown this, the girl merely grinned, examined the list closely, and said:

“I’m gonna’ pay it, but I still think you’re wrong.”

Finally she moved away from the window, but not before she had turned to Emma Lou and said,

“You're next,” and then proceeded to wait until Emma Lou had finished.

Emma Lou vainly sought some way to escape, but was unable to do so, and had no choice but to walk with the girl to the registrar’s office where they had their cards stamped in return for the bursar’s receipt. This done, they went onto the campus together. Hazel Mason was the girl’s name. Emma Lou had fully expected it to be either Hyacinth or Geranium. Hazel was from Texas, Prairie Valley, Texas, and she told Emma Lou that her father, having become quite wealthy when oil had been found on his farm lands, had been enabled to realize two life ambitions—obtain a Packard touring car and send his only daughter to a “fust-class” white school.

Emma Lou had planned to loiter around the campus. She was still eager to become acquainted with the colored members of the student body, and this encounter with the crass and vulgar Hazel Mason had only made her the more eager. She resented being approached by any one so flagrantly inferior, any one so noticeably a typical southern darky, who had