Mama duck sat down on a rickety box, motioning me to another one on the
shaky old porch. "Take keer you doan fall thoo dat old floor," she
cautioned. "It's bout ready to fall to pieces, but I way behind in the
rent, so I kaint ask em to have it fixed."

"I see you have no glass in the windows--doesn't it get you wet when it
rains?"

"Not me. I gits over on de other side of de room. It didn't have no door
neither when I moved in. De young folks frum here useta use it for a
courtin-house."

"A what?"

"Courtin-house. Dey kept a-comin after I moved in, an I had to shoo em
away. Dat young rascal comin yonder--he one of em. I clare to
goodness--" and Mama Duck raised her voice for the trespasser's benefit,
"I wisht I had me a fence to keep folks outa my yard."

"Qua-a-ck, quack, quack," the young Negro mocked, and passed on
grinning.

"Dat doan worry me none; I doan let _nothin_ worry me. Worry makes folks
gray-headed." She scratched her head where three gray braids, about the
length and thickness of a flapper's eyebrow, stuck out at odd angles.

"I sho got plenty chancet to worry ifen I wants to," she mused, as she
sipped water from a fruit-jar foul with fingermarks. "Relief folks got
me on dey black list. Dey won't give me rations--dey give rations to
young folks whas workin, but won't give me nary a mouthful."

"Why is that?"

"Well, dey wanted me to go to de poor house. I was willin to go, but I
wanted to take my trunk along an dey wouldn't let me. I got some things
in dere I been havin nigh onta a hunnert years. Got my old blue-back
Webster, onliest book I ever had, scusin my Bible. Think I wanna throw
dat stuff away? No-o, suh!" Mama Duck pushed the dog away from a
cracked pitcher on the floor and refilled her fruit-jar. "So day black
list me, cause I won't kiss dey feets. I ain kissin _nobody's_
feets--wouldn't kiss my own mammy's."

"Well, we'd all do lots of things for our mothers that we wouldn't do
for anyone else."

"Maybe you would, but not me. My mammy put me in a hickry basket when I
was a day an a half old, with nothin on but my belly band an diaper.
Took me down in de cotton patch an sot me on a stump in de bilin sun."

"What in the world did she do that for?"

"Cause I was black. All de other younguns was bright. My granmammy done
hear me bawlin an go fotch me to my mammy's house. 'Dat you mammy?' she
ask, sweet as pie, when granmammy pound on de door.

"'Doan you never call me mammy no m