Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/257

 the river had swallowed their rice-fields, but the black people were used to hardship and they lived on here and throve. Her mother had been born here and her grandmother and all the other women before them right on back to the first ones who were brought long ago up the river from the town where a slave market gave them and other black people to the rice- and cotton-fields. She had got her health and strength and vigor from them.

The same old cabins housed them. The same old fields had taken their days. Sunshine and work, darkness and rest, that was all they had, and there would be nothing else in the world to-day if a body did not stop to pleasure a little now and then. Yet, work is good, and sunshine is good, even when its scorching heat burns backs and the soles of bare feet. It freshens weakness and brings back strength, and the field which takes time and labor gives back pay enough te make life pleasant.

A crooked old rose-tree had covered its knotted black limbs with red blossoms which were sweet with honey. Bees hummed eagerly over them, then settled on them, searching them, walking through them with bold brown legs, shattering them and scattering them on the ground. Bees