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By FRANCES NOBLE PHAIR S ALLY dug her black toes into the if her face had not shone black as ebony in the southern sunshine, for Sally’s toes seldom knew the feeling of shoes or socks. “Haint no use,” she said in a low voice. The low voice was so bitter that if her mother could have' heard it, she would have known, that the heart of the thin little nine-year-old was nearly breaking. But there was no one. to hear. Ol’ Joe, hoeing the corn at the far end of the field, was singing, “I’se luvin’ Jesus, an’ de Lawd 1’se gwain to Hebben, Hallelu, , Hallelu.” Ol’ Joe was Sally’s Granpappy, and ever since she could remember she had heard him sing those words while he hoed. “Who’s Jesus?” she asked him one day. The. old man puckered his lips and muttered, “Dunno, chile, dunno. But I’se luvin’ Jesus.” “Whar’s Hebben?” she interrupted again. Shaking his head that was as white as though the cotton he picked grew on it, he crooned, “Dunno, chile, dun- no. But I’se gwain, Hallelu.” “See,” Sally thought to herself. “Granpappy don’ know what he sing about.” . But there was only one question troubling Sally now. It was, “Whar’s Maw?” That question, “Whar’s Maw?” had kept ringing in the ears of the grown ups ever since Sally had come home from the neighbors!, pface across the clearing where slje had been sent for a few days,“to play with the young- uns, ’cause Maw’s sure pow’ful sick,” lubs me.
soft earth of the cornfield at the edge of the woodland. They would have been the same color even
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"What is the trouble, child?” She spoke gently. Dashing the tears. from her eyes, Sally gazed into the kind face bend ing above hers. Sally had seen very few white peo ple in all her life. She had spent her nine years in a lonely shanty, sur rounded by the corn patches and wide cotton fields, far from the highway. But two years before, a precious little picture card had been given to one of her playmates, and Sally had feasted her eyes on the pretty white lady with the shining hair and white dress and wings like thé snowy white heron’s—the beautiful bird that lives in the marshlands. Sally’s sister Clarissa, who had been to school three terms and had “ book lamin’,” guessed that it was the pic ture of an “anjul, a good spirut what live in de sky.” Clarissa didn’t really know. She said it was a shame Sally couldn’t hav* “book lamin’,” too, be*
her, grown sister had said. When she came back, Maw was gone. “Whar’s Maw? Why’s she 'daid’ ? Whar IS she?” Sally had cried first ih hushed fear, then wildly. And no one could lell her. Now as she stood alone in the warm sunshine of an early spring day, with the calls of woodland birds sounding in her ears, and the sweet familiar smell of growing things surging round her, the pain that wracked her thin little chest grew so fierce that big te'ars rolled in a sudden stream down her cheeks. From between her lips came a cry like that of a wounded animal. It drowned out the rustle of leaves at the edge of the road and also the light footfall of the young woman coming over the woodland path to the clearing’s edge. Helen Mason’s sympathetic ear caught the tone of real grief in the sudden cry that broke upon the quiet of the/ afternoon.
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