For weeks I had been face to face with cruel conditions of life, had
seen hardships and denials and injustices, and dreary monotony of
days, and I wanted for a while to get away from it all, to breathe
deep of that which would renew and reinforce and revitalize; wanted
to be a child again, and, with Selwyn as my playmate, wander along
the winding road with faces to the sun, and hearts of hope, and faith
that God would not forget, and the world would yet be well. If
nobody was going to do anything to us, if we were not needed to play
a part, the hours ahead could be ours. The train on which we were to
return did not leave until three-thirty. I looked at my watch. It
was ten-thirty.

"Get something from somebody." My hand made movement toward the men
about us and then in the direction of the shacks and sheds and cabins
of the negroes, scattered at wide intervals apart from the village,
which consisted of a long, rambling street with a white frame church
at one end, a gray one at the other, a court-house in the middle, and
a school-house at its back. "Get a buggy and something you can drive
and let's have a holiday--just by ourselves. What is that house over
there?"

I pointed to a square, old-fashioned red-brick building set well back
from the road and surrounded by great oak-trees, and smaller ones of
birch and maple and spruce and pine, and shrubs of various kinds. It
was Claxon's one redemption. Shading my eyes, I read the tin sign
swinging in the wind from a rod nailed at right angles to a sagging
post at its gateless yard. "Swan Tavern." The name thrilled. I was
no longer a twentieth-century person, but a lady of other days, and
if a coach and four with outriders had appeared I would have stepped
in it with delight. It did not appear, nor was Selwyn suddenly in