downtown with white friends last week, and the next morning the coloured servants left? They said they wouldn't wait on Niggers!
Sometimes they laugh! Byron went on, his voice choking.
They don't know, Mary consoled him, these others, they don't know what they're doing.
That makes it worse still, Byron cried passionately. I go into an office where a white boy or a white girl is sitting at the desk. What do you want? they demand superciliously. He won't see you. He don't want Niggers!
I went through it when I tried to get into the library, Mary confessed. At first no one would even see me. Not a single member of the board would grant me an appointment. Eventually, a letter which Mr. Sumner wrote to an influential friend won me a hearing. Now, to be perfectly frank, they're lovely to me, but they don't promote me. They promote the white girls.
What can we do? Byron demanded, clasping and unclasping his hands. Here we are in an alien world. We think, we feel. We do our best to fit in. We don't want them. All we want is to be let alone, a chance to earn money, to be respectable.
I believe, said Mary, that they actually prefer us when we're not respectable.
They walked up Seventh Avenue in silence. The streets were crowded with pedestrians, white and coloured, scurrying home from work. As they ap-
