Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/48

 Although Emma Lou had finished registering, she returned to the university campus on the following morning in order to continue her quest for collegiate companions without the alarming and unwelcome presence of Hazel Mason. She didn’t know whether to be sorry for the girl and try to help her or to be disgusted and avoid her. She didn’t want to be intimately associated with any such vulgar person. It would damage her own position, cause her to be classified with some one who was in a class by herself, for Emma Lou was certain that there was not, and could not be, any one else in the university just like Hazel. But despite her vulgarity, the girl was not all bad. Her good nature was infectious, and Emma Lou had surmised from her monologue on the day before how utterly unselfish a person she could be and was. All of her store of the world’s goods were at hand to be used and enjoyed by her friends. There was not, as she had said, “a selfish bone in her body.” But even that did not alter the disgusting fact that she was not one who would be welcome by the “right sort of people.” Her flamboyant style of dress, her loud voice, her raucous laughter, and her flagrant disregard or ignorance of English grammar seemed inexcusable to Emma Lou, who was unable to understand how such a person could stray so far from the environment in which she rightfully be-