Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/164

 July is a case. A heavy case to do you such a way."

She was weighted down with sorrow. Day and night, even when July was not in her consciousness her heart lay hard in her breast. Sometimes her dull misery changed to showers of stinging black fury. She'd like to kill Cinder and July too. She'd like to cut their smooth black throats from ear to ear with a razor. She'd like to beat in their skulls with a hatchet. This world was not big enough to hold them and herself. She knew she was a fool, for they were far out of her reachh Maum Hannah and Budda Ben did all they could to help her to peace and yet in their manner, in everybody's manner, in every word spoken to comfort her, she felt a tinge of reproach.

Day after day went by, night after night, all alike. The hot weather had cooled and the sun paled. Mary picked cotton in the field with the other women, but instead of keeping up with the best as she had always done, her cotton weights fell off, and the money she made was scarcely enough for rations, but every Saturday night, after giving her part of his rations, June got her extra things, such as a can of salmon or a loaf of white bread, from Grab-All.

Winter came with a bleak cold wind and a