Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/226

 was weighed down by powerless sinews and a painful misery that clogged his joints. She was supple and lithe, and her body seldom knew weariness, while Ben stayed weary all the time. Her feet stepped lightly through the years and Budda's legs had to walk, half-squatting, slowly, following the long stout stick his hands used to guide them. But both of them resented many of the ways and customs of the plantation people who never stopped to think about things, and accepted ideas and beliefs which were handed down to them, the same as they accepted the old houses where they were born and worked in the, same old fields which their parents and grandparents had salted with sweat.

When Mary first began sinning openly, Budda Ben tried his best to stop her, then when he found that nothing he said made her change her ways, he began defending her and holding that whatever people crave to do is good for them to do. If Mary fed her children and clothed them and trained them to be brave-hearted, to work, and to have manners, that was enough to expect of her. She was not a member of any lodge or society or church, and she had a right to live her own life as she liked. He defended everything she did. He declared that except for his own mother, Mary was the best woman on