Lida was afraid to cross the street where the chain-gang was working, but she knew she had to. She had promised Mother to come home and bathe at five, and besides it was wrong to be afraid, and besides what could possibly hurt her. The Negro prisoners were all coupled together by heavy chains at their ankles, and a white man with a gun was watching them. She would go quietly across in a grown-up way, and nobody would even notice her. Of course, she could walk down and cross at the corner, and then walk back up to her own house on the other side. But that would be going out of her way for no real reason; Mother might see her and ask her why she was coming from the wrong direction. And she would have to say she had been afraid.
She helped Annie Byrd pick up the scraps from their paper-doll cutting, and then she said goodbye, she had to go.
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