“All went well, and I got to Georgetown one evening very tired. Was kindly welcomed, slept in my narrow bed with two other roommates, and on the morrow began my new life by seeing a poor man die at dawn, and sitting all day between a boy with pneumonia and a man shot through the lungs. A strange day, but I did my best; and when I put mother’s little black shawl round the boy while he sat up panting for breath, he smiled and said, “You are real motherly, ma’am.” I felt as if I was getting on. The man only lay and stared with his big black eyes, and made me very nervous. But all were well behaved; and I sat looking at the twenty strong faces as they looked back at me,—hoping that I looked “motherly” to them; for my thirty years made me feel old, and the suffering round me made me long to comfort every one.”
The stable Buck is a black man, hunched over wit ha crooked back. He is smart (he reads) and strong and yet he is abused by the boss anytime he is mad because he is black.
