“Knows what?”
“That that child, that Christmas boy, is a nigger.”
“A what?” the matron said. Backthrust in her chair, she glared at the younger woman. “A ne— I dont believe it!” she cried. “I dont believe it!”
“You dont have to believe it,” the other said. “But he knows it. He stole him away because of it.”
The matron was past fifty, flabby faced, with weak, kind, frustrated eyes. “I dont believe it!” she said. But on the third day she sent for the dietitian. She looked as if she had not slept in some time. The dietitian, on the contrary, was quite fresh, quite serene. She was still unshaken when the matron told her the news, that the man and the child had been found. “At Little Rock,” the matron said. “He tried to put the child into an orphanage there. They thought he was crazy and he
