Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/127

 in and sit down and have a cup of newly steeped life-elastic tea that he had just finished brewing; it would do her good. Nothing is better in the fall than life-elastic tea.

Daddy Cudjoe was used to having people come to him for advice, and he knew how to make them feel at home. Mary had never been here before, but when she was a child, whenever she saw the old, white-haired, bent man passing the house, or in the woods digging roots, she always ran from him, and he would stop and laugh and shake his fist and cackle out, "You better run! If I catch you, I'll conjure you!" and he looked so strange, with his black eyes shining under thick, white, bushy brows, she believed he would.

His cabin's two rooms ran the length of the house with a low board wall between them, one for Daddy Cudjoe to sleep in and the other for him to work in. Mary sat down by the fireplace, whose hearth was filled with steaming pots. Strange smells rose. Medicine, charms, love- and hate-potions all mixed their breaths together as they brewed side by side on the red coals.

"De sight o you face makes my eyeballs feel pure rich," Daddy Cudjoe greeted Mary.

He poured her the drink, then he rubbed his knotted hands together, and with a kind smile asked, "What you want, daughter?"