Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/203

 of the men and women as were not in the fields at work. His old grandmother lived in a neat whitewashed cabin shaded by a giant fig-tree. She was of the pure African type, tall and powerful, with a kindly old face threaded with a web of wrinkles. Her head was bound up in a bandanna handkerchief so arranged as to give the effect of an impossibly elongated occipital development. Her spotless white dress and kerchief brought out her grotesque features as a snood of ivory enhances the blackness of an ebony mask. A dozen babies left in her care rolled about on the clean sanded floor, yelping and screaming like a litter of young puppies. A broken pitcher, containing a bunch of yellow-hearted lilies, stood on a shelf beside a young mulatto woman who was sitting in the corner suckling an infant. She was the embodiment of physical beauty and strength, her color a warm bronze, her features delicate and almost Greek in their perfection of outline. The hands were slim, and the bare feet high-instepped and aristocratic in shape. The strain of white blood which had crossed the African in her must have been a patrician one. She did not notice the visitors, but went on crooning a low song to the child in her arms. Hero ignored her presence as completely as she failed to recognize his. He spoke only to the old woman, never glancing at