of yours. You'll be ever so
much happier."

"Well, I jes' ain't gwine go nary step." The defiant voice had become a
passionate shriek. "Think Ise gwine leave yere an' go live in dat little
house down dere by dem noisy tracks whar all dem odds an' ends of pore
w'ite trash lives--dem scourin's an' sweepin's whut come yere to wuk in
de new cotton mill! Think Ise gwine be corntent to wuk in a gyarden
whilst I knows Ise needed right yere to run dis place de way which it
should be run! Think Ise gwine set quiet whilst Ise pulled up by de
roots an' transported 'way frum de house whar Ise spend purty nigh de
whole of my endurin' life! Well, I won't go--_I_ won't never go! I won't
go--'ca'se I jes' can't!" And then, to the intense distress of the
girls, Aunt Sharley slumped into a chair, threw her floury hands over
her face and with the big tears trickling out between her fingers she
moaned over and over again between her gulping breaths:

"Oh, dat I should live to see de day w'en my own chillens wants to drive
me away frum 'em! Oh, dat I should live to see dis day!"

Neither of them had ever seen Aunt Sharley weep like this--shaken as she
was with great sobs, her head bowed almost to her knees, her bared arms
quivering in a very palsy. They tried to comfort her, tried to put their
arms about her, both of them crying too. At the touch of their arms
stealing about her hunched shoulders she straightened, showing a spark
of the spirit with which they were more familiar. She wrenched her body
free of them and pointed a tremulous finger at the door. The two sisters
stole out, feeling terribly guilty and thoroughly miserable.

It was not the Aunt Sharley they knew who waited upon them that dusk at
supper. Rather it was her ghost--a ghost with a black mask of tragedy
for a face, with eyes swollen and reddened, with lips which shook in
occasional spasms of pain, though their owner strove to keep them firm.
With their own faces tear-streaked and with lumps in their throats the
girls kept their heads averted, as though they had been caught doing
something very wrong, and made poor pretense of eating the dishes that
the old woman placed before them. Such glances as they stole at her were
sidelong covert glances, but they marked plainly enough how her
shoulders drooped and how she dragged herself about the table.

Within a space of time to be measured by hours and almost by minutes she
seemed to have aged years.

It was a mute meal a