Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/184

 she came opposite the minister's house, thinking herself alone, she burst into a gay, rapid song, the words of which she so mutilated in her barbarous accent that only a final "Oh, Molly-oh!" could be distinguished. She carried an herb-basket on her arm now, into which, from time to time, she looked with great satisfaction.

Nathaniel ran down the stairs and out of the door calling. She paused, startled. "How can you sing and laugh and walk so lightly?" he cried out.

She cocked her head on one side with her turtle-like motion. "Why should she not sing?" she asked in her thick, sweet voice. She had never learned the difference betwen [sic] the pronouns. "She's be'n gatherin' yarbs in the wood, an' th' sun is warm," she blinked at it rapidly, "an' the winter it is pas', Marse Natty, no mo' winter!"

Nathaniel came close up to her, laying his thin fingers on her fat, black arm. His voice quivered. "But they say if you love those things and if they make you glad you are damned to everlasting brimstone fire. Tell me how you dare to laugh, so that I will dare too."

The old woman laughed, opening her mouth so widely that the red lining to her throat showed moistly, and all her fat shook on her bones, "Lord love ye, chile, dat's white folks talk. Dat don't scare a old black woman!" She shifted her basket to the other arm and prepared to go on. "You're bleeged to be keerful 'bout losin' yo' soul. Black folks ain't got no souls, bless de Lord! When dey dies dey dies!"

She shuffled along, laughing, and began to sing again. Nathaniel looked after her with burning eyes. After she had disappeared between the tree trunks of the forest, the breeze bore back to him a last joyous whoop of "Oh,