tton and the white stuff is
pressed into bales. You ought to see the big presses! It squeezes the
cotton all up!"

"I hope it doesn't squeeze us!" laughed Sue.

"I'll keep you back out of danger," promised Grace.

The children walked through the cotton field of the plantation and were
greeted by broad grins and smiles on the part of the colored folk. There
seemed to be more children than grown people working in the field, and
Sam said it was sometimes hard to get old pickers, so children had to be
used.

The darkies did not work very fast, and often, as Bunny and his sister
walked along with their new friends, the hands would stop working to
look at the children. This, with their habit of stopping to sing every
now and then, slowed up the cotton picking.

"I'd like to go to the mill and see the cotton pressed into bales," said
Bunny after a while.

"All right, we'll go," said Sam. "You've seen about all there is to see
here."

As they turned away Sue suddenly called:

"Hark!"

They all listened, and Grace said:

"That's one of their banjos! They bring them to the field and play and
dance."

"Oh, let's see that!" cried Sue. "It'll be more fun than going to the
cotton factory!"

Bunny, too, wanted to listen to the music, so they turned aside into a
part of the field where most of the cotton had been picked from the
bushes. The darkies, who had finished this part of their work, were
celebrating after a fashion.

Some boards had been laid down, and an awning placed over them to make a
place where bags of cotton were tied up to be taken to the gin. Gathered
around this platform were a number of negro men, women and children. One
of the men had an old banjo, and though the instrument seemed battered
and broken, he managed to get some lively music from it.

"Golly, dat suah mek me want to shuffle mah feet!" exclaimed one
bright-eyed colored lad.

"Why doan you shuffle 'em den, Rastus?" some one called. "Show de white
folks how you kin cut de pigeon wing!"

"Oh, landy, banjo music suah am sweet!" cried an old white-wooled
colored woman, with a jolly laugh.

Then the man with the banjo "cut loose," as one of his friends called
it, and played such a lively tune that even Bunny and Sue said they
felt like dancing. But they wanted to see what the cotton pickers did,
and so they watched. Out on the wooden platform shuffled Rastus, and the
way he kicked up, turned cartwheels, stood on his hands and danced
aro