Page:The New Negro.pdf/108

82 an' put her arms 'roun' y neck, an' you'd send her to Europe if she wanted to go!”

“Well, all I says is, when dey gits to denyin' de Bible hit's time to stop 'em.”

“Well all I says is, if Cousin Sukie an' yo' no 'count brother, Jonathan, can send their gal all the way from Athens to them Howard's an' pay car-fare an' boa'd an' ev'ything, we can send our gal—"

She broke off as a door slammed. There was a rush, a delightful squeal, and both parents were being smothered in a cyclone of embraces by a wildly jubilant daughter.

“Mummy! Daddy! I won it! I won it!"

“What under the sun—?"

“The scholarship, Mummy! The scholarship!”

“No!"

“Yes, I did! I can go to Columbia! I can go to Teachers College! Isn't it great?”

Anna's mother turned triumphantly to her husband; but he was beaming at his daughter.

“You sho' is yo daddy's chile. Teachers College! Why, that's wha' I been wantin' you to go all along!”

Rare sight in a close-built, top-heavy city—space. A wide open lot, extending along One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street almost from Lenox to Seventh Avenue; baring the mangy backs of a long row of One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Street houses; disclosing their gaping, gasping windows, their shameless strings of half-laundered rags, which gulp up what little air the windows seek to inhale. Occupying the Lenox Avenue end of the lot, the so-called Garvey tabernacle, wide, low, squat, with its stingy little entrance; occupying the other, the church tent where summer camp meetings are held.

Pete and his buddy, Lucky, left their head-to-head game of coon-can as darkness came on. Time to go out—had to save