Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/148

 Maum Hannah said prayers were answered. God listened to people and gave them the things they asked for, provided they plead with Him long and hard enough. Maybe praying now would bring July home. She began whispering, silently, earnestly, "Please, God, do, little kind Jedus, send July back home to me. Do don' let that wicked woman, Cinder, keep him. She is a sinner. One man is the same as another to her, so long as they are young an' strong an' have money jingling in their pockets." Mary's prayer was filled with telling God about Cinder's sins. She forgot all about praying for the forgiveness of her own sin, that old scarlet sin she and July had sinned together before they ever married.

She had never even confessed it to Brer Dee and the deacons, who turned her straight out of the church for dancing. Kind old Brer Dee had no pity where sin was concerned. He would turn his own child out of the church as quickly as he'd turn out a stranger.

He opened the worn Bible, and, although the lamp was dim and smoky and blurred and his eyes were not sharp and his lips stumbled badly over some of the long hard words they tried to say, he still made enough of them plain to tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh, the wicked,