John Jay]

"Ow! I'll be good! I'll be good! Oh, Mammy, don't! You'se a-killin' me!"
came in a high shriek.

Then there was a sudden dash for the cabin door, and an eight-year-old
colored boy scurried down the path like a little wild rabbit, as fast as
his bare feet could carry him. The noise ended as suddenly as it had
begun; so suddenly, indeed, that the silence seemed intense, although
the air was full of all the low twitterings and soft spring sounds that
come with the early days of April.

Uncle Billy stood chuckling over the boy's escape. The situation had
been made clear to him by the angry exclamations he had just overheard.
John Jay, left in charge of the weekly washing, flapping on the line,
had been unfaithful to his trust. A neighbor's goat had taken advantage
of his absence to chew up a pillowcase and two aprons.

Really, the child was not so much to blame. It was the fault of the
fish-pond, sparkling below the hill. But old Mammy couldn't understand
that. She had never been a boy, with the water tempting her to come and
angle for its shining minnows; with the budding willows beckoning her,
and the warm winds luring her on. But Uncle Billy understood, and felt
with a sympathetic tingle in every rheumatic old joint, that it was a
temptation beyond the strength of any boy living to resist.

His chuckling suddenly stopped as the old woman appeared in the doorway.
He fell to chopping again with such vigor that the chips flew wildly in
all directions. He knew from the way that her broad feet slapped along
the beaten path that she was still angry, and he thought it safest to
take no notice of her, beyond a cheery "Good mawnin', sis' Sheba."

"Huh! Not much good about it that I can see!" was her gloomy reply.
Lowering the basket she carried from her head to a fence-post, she began
the story of her grievances. It was an old story to Uncle Billy,
somewhat on the order of "The house that Jack built;" for, after telling
John Jay's latest pranks, she always repeated the long line of misdeeds
of which he had been guilty since the first day he had found a home
under her sagging rooftree.

Usually she found a sympathetic listener in Uncle Billy, but this
morning the only comfort he offered was an old plantation proverb,
spoken with brotherly frankness.

"Well, sis' Sheba, I 'low it'll be good for you in the long run.
'Troubles is seasonin'. 'Simmons ain't good twel dey er fros'bit,' you
know."

He stole a sidel