When they came within sight and hearing of the schoolhouse, their practised ears detected (although with no hint of foreboding) that something unusual had happened. The children were not running about and screaming, but standing with their heads close together, talking, and talking, and talking. As Judith and Sylvia came near, several ran to meet them, hurling out at them like a hard-flung stone: "Say--what d'ye think? Those Fingál girls are niggers!"
To the end of her life, Sylvia would never forget the rending shock of disillusion brought her by these blunt words. She did not dream of disbelieving them, or of underestimating their significance. A thousand confirmatory details leaped into her mind: the rich, sweet voices--the dramatic ability--the banjo--the deprecatory air of timidity--the self-conscious unwillingness to take the leading position to which their talents and beauty gave them a right. Yes, of course it was true! In the space of a heartbeat, all her romantic Italian imaginings vanished. She continued to walk forward mechanically, in an utter confusion of mind.
She heard Judith asking in an astonished voice, "Why, what makes you think so?" and she listened with a tortured attention to the statement vouchsafed in an excited chorus by a great many shrill little voices that the Fingáls' old cook had taken a little too much whiskey for once and had fallen to babbling at the grocery-store before a highly entertained audience of neighbors, about the endless peregrinations of the Fingál family in search of a locality where the blood of the children would not be suspected--"an' theah motheh, fo' all heh good looks, second cousin to Mattice!" she had tittered foolishly, gathering up her basket and rolling tipsily out of the store.
"_Well_--" said Judith, "did you ever!" She was evidently as much amazed as her sister, but Sylvia felt with a sinking of the heart that what seemed to her the real significance of the news had escaped Judith.
The Five A girls came trooping up to Sylvia.--"Of course we can't have Camilla at the picnic."--"My uncle wouldn't want a _nigger_ there."--"We'll have to tell her she can't come."
Sylvia heard from the other groups of children about them snatches of similar talk.--"Anybody might ha' known it--singin' the way they do--just like niggers' voices."--"They'll have to go to the _nigger_ school now."--"Huh! puttin' on airs with their carriage and their black dresses--nothin' but niggers!" The air seemed full of that word. Sylvia sickened and quailed.