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Show 112 "Kid, my pa will lick me, " wailed Emmy. "Mine will, too, " said Annie, Lasca, and ditto. It hadn't occurred to me, but as we came along the fear was voiced over and over and it finally infected me. The rest of us envied Annie because she would get home first. She would make it home before dark, but we had a mile left to go when she turned off, westward, across the river. I had a block to go alone after parting from Emmy and Lasca. It was all I could do to walk to the door, enter, and fall back against it, still clutching the limp knot of my dress and the wilted watercress. I lifted guilty eyes to Mama's, but she didn't seem to see my misery. "Laws, honey, how you've grid since I seen you, " she said mildly. ' This was not the way she talked; she used good grammar, but she was a mimic, and at the moment she was my negro mammy and I was her little pickaninny. I never loved her more than at that moment. "Good land, you've brought us watercress! " The watercress was revived in cold water, the bugs carefully picked off. We ate every leaf after several washings, and after it had been "blessed to our good. " I suspect that Mama was glad to see me have a little carefree time for play, seeing that Papa was bound to make a man of me during the week days. I wasn't even that old when he took me to Kanosh to drive the wagon. In fact, that was the autumn before, when I was twelve, Eldon fifteen, and Macel ten. |
