Explore "The Walls of Jericho" by Rudolph Fisher on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It happened the next morning that Linda ran out of sugar, discovering her predicament only a few minutes before Miss Cramp's breakfast was to be served. There were, of course, no grocery stores within three blocks of exclusive Court Avenue, and while ordinarily Miss Cramp would have waited without complaint till the errand was run, today the situation was awkward: Miss Cramp had company, a lady from Baltimore, Maryland; a friend, to be sure, but a friend whose breakfast must not be delayed by the delinquencies of a colored maid.
Linda, therefore, following professional tradition, resolved to borrow sufficient from her next-door neighbor to tide over the temporary lack, and was already on the kitchen-porch going to the Irish girl next door, when she saw a Negro woman beating rugs in the back yard of the second house. She had her own curiosity about that particular house, because she had overheard Miss Cramp and the present guest discussing it, and she decided that this was her chance at an opening that would satisfy that curiosity. She would borrow the sugar from the colored woman.