und made Bunny and Sue laugh in delight.

Others of the pickers, men and women, girls and boys, danced, and then
along came the driver of one of the mule carts who had a mouth organ. He
added this music to that of the banjo, until quite a crowd had
collected.

"My goodness!" exclaimed a voice behind Bunny and Sue when there came a
lull in the fun. "Cotton picking can't be such very hard work after
all!" The children turned around to see their mother and Mrs. Morton,
who had come to the field.

"Oh, the darkies have to have their fun, and if we didn't let them we
wouldn't get as much work done as now takes place," said the wife of the
cotton planter. "Life is rather slow and easy down here."

Indeed it seemed so. After more banjo and mouth organ music, the pickers
gradually went to another part of the field, and Bunny and Sue, with
the two Morton children, were allowed to go to the place where the loose
cotton was pressed into big bales.

Cotton, as you have doubtless noticed, is very light and fluffy. A pound
of it, loose, takes up much room, and it is to save room that it is
pressed into bales, or bundles. Each one weighs about five hundred
pounds, and the bales are somewhat larger than a barrel, though of
square shape and not round. But if the cotton were allowed to fluff out,
it would take up four or five times this room.

Guided by Sam and Grace, Bunny and his sister were taken to the cotton
gin and baling place. First the seeds must be taken out of the cotton.
To do this the fluffy mass, as it is taken from the bags or baskets in
which it is carted from the field, is fed into a machine.

The machine is like a big clothes wringer, but the rolls, instead of
being made of smooth rubber, are rough, and covered with sharp iron
teeth.

As the cotton passes between these toothed rollers they tear it apart,
loosening the seeds, which drop down while the cleaned cotton goes to
the other side of the machine ready to be baled.

The cotton seeds are used for many things, being sometimes fed to cattle
in the form of meal, or from them oil may be squeezed which is almost as
good to eat as olive oil.

"I want to see the cotton pushed into bales," said Bunny, and his
Southern friends led the way into the factory. There were white wisps of
cotton all about, clinging to the walls and ceiling of the pressing
room, as well as to the colored men who were working there. Bunny and
Sue did not understand much about the machine