Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/181



"Aunt Pearly Gates, do you mind being black all the way through? Sometimes, I wish I'd a' been born black and could come live down in your cabin with you and Uncle Si."

"Laws-a-mussy, Miss Becky baby, that ain't no way for 'ristocratical white chilluns ter talk. The good Gawd makes some of us black an' some of us white, but when you hear black folks longin' fer white hides or white folks longin' fer black hides 'tain't nothin' but the ol' Debble a' whisperin' in their hearts—the Debble er discontentment."

"Well, Aunt Pearly Gates, I wish God had been just a little gooder and made me either very white or very black."

"Now, honey chil', you stay in out the weather some an' if you's bleeged ter go out put on yo' sunbonnet an' you won't be near so bluenettish. How you 'spect ter be fa' as a lily if you go bare-haided right out in the sun an' win'?"

"But, Aunt Pearly Gates, you have been in out of the weather for years and years—"