Chapter 20 - Page 2

continued his walk. He had smoked a couple of cigars, and was returning toward Mrs. Treadwells', when he met, face to face, Miss Laura Treadwell coming out of the barber's house. He lifted his hat and put out his hand.

"I called at the house a while ago, and you were all out. I was just going back. I'll walk along with you."

Miss Laura was visibly embarrassed at the meeting. The colonel gave no sign that he noticed her emotion, but went on talking.

"It is a delightful evening," he said.

"Yes," she replied, and then went on, "you must wonder what I was doing there."

"I suppose," he said, "that you were looking for a servant, or on some mission of kindness and good will."

Miss Laura was silent for a moment and he could feel her hand tremble on the arm he offered her.

"No, Henry," she said, "why should I deceive you? I did not go to find a servant, but to serve. I have told you we were poor, but not how poor. I can tell you what I could not say to others, for you have lived away from here, and I know how differently from most of us you look at things. I went to the barber's house to give the barber's daughter music lessons--for money."

The colonel laughed contagiously.

"You taught her to sing--

'I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls?'"

"Yes, but you must not judge my work too soon," she replied. "It is not finished yet."

"You shall let me know when it is done," he said, "and I will walk by and hear the finished product. Your pupil has improved wonderfully. I heard her singing the song the day I came back--the first time I walked by the old house. She sings it much better now. You are a good teacher, as well as a good woman."

Miss Laura laughed somewhat excitedly, but was bent upon her explanation.

"The girl used to come to the house," she said. "Her mother belonged to us before the war, and we have been such friends as white and black can be. And she wanted to learn to play, and offered to pay me well for lessons, and I gave them to her. We never speak about the money at the house; mother knows it, but feigns that I do it out of mere kindness, and tells me that I am spoiling the coloured people. Our friends are not supposed to know it, and if any of them do, they are kind and never speak of it. Since you have been coming to the house, it has not been convenient to teach her there, and I have been going to her home in the evening."

"My dear Laura," said the colonel, remorsefully, "I have driven you away from your own home, and all unwittingly. I applaud your enterprise and your public spirit. It is a long way from the banjo to the piano--it marks the progress of a family and foreshadows the evolution of a race. And what higher work