"
"But what is it you want?" asked the mayor, somewhat nettled because
O'Brien, instead of backing him up, was busy piling three million
golden dollars on the floor in stacks two and a half feet high.
"We want to be left alone!" The reply came in a chorus of trebles,
pipings, quavers, and adolescent falsettos that caused the mayor to lift
his hands to his forehead entreating silence. "We want our old
privileges again. We want to be allowed just to grow up."
"Yassir," shrilled one voice above the others, "jist to grow up."
The mayor raised himself in his chair and his eyes lit up with surprise
at the sight of a well-known black little face at the very end of the
second row.
"What, Topsy, you here?" he called out. "Haven't you done growing all
these sixty years, nearly?"
"Yassir," answered Topsy, inserting an index finger into her mouth. "Ah
was shure growin' fas'; but Massa Booker Washin'ton he says that ah and
the likes of me was charged with th' future of the negro race. An' that
skyeered me so ah made up mah mind ah wouldn' grow no further."
The mayor turned to Helen.
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