“Is it wrong,” asked Zora, “to make believe you likes people when you don’t, when you’se afeared of them and thinks they may rub off and dirty you?”
“Why—why—yes, if you—if you, deceive.”
“Then you lies sometimes, don’t you?”
Miss Taylor stared helplessly at the solemn eyes that seemed to look so deeply into her.
“Perhaps—I do, Zora; I’m sure I don’t mean to, and—I hope God will forgive me.”
Zora softened.
“Oh, I reckon He will if He’s a good God, because He’d know that lies like that are heaps better than blabbing the truth right out. Only,” she added severely, “you mustn’t keep saying it’s wicked to lie ’cause it ain’t. Sometimes I lies,” she reflected pensively, “and sometimes I don’t—it depends.”
Miss Taylor forgot her collar, and fingered the pin on the desk. She felt at once a desperate desire to know this girl better and to establish her own authority. Yet how should she do it? She kept toying with the pin, and Zora watched her. Then Miss Taylor said, absently:
“Zora, what do you propose to do when you grow up?”
Zora considered.
“Think and walk—and rest,” she concluded.
“I mean, what work?”
“Work? Oh, I shan’t work. I don’t like work—do you?”
Miss Taylor winced, wondering if the girl were lying again. She said quickly:
“Why, yes—that is, I like some kinds of work.”
“What kinds?”
But Miss Taylor refused to have the matter made personal, as Zora had a disconcerting way of pointing all their discussions.
“Everybody likes some kinds of work,” she insisted.
“If you likes it, it ain’t work,” declared Zora; but Mary Taylor proceeded around her circumscribed circle:
“You might make a good cook, or a maid.”
“I hate cooking. What’s a maid?”
“Why, a woman who helps others.”
“Helps folks that they love? I’d like that.”
“It is not a question of affection,” said Miss Taylor, firmly: “one is paid for it.”
“I wouldn’t work for pay.”
“But you’ll have to, child; you’ll have to earn a living.”
“Do you work for pay?”
“I work to earn a living.”
“Same thing, I reckon, and it ain’t true. Living just comes free, like—like sunshine.”
“Stuff! Zora, your people must learn to work and work steadily and work hard—” She stopped, for she was sure Zora was not listening; the far away look was in her eyes and they were shining. She was beautiful as she stood there—strangely, almost uncannily, but startlingly beautiful with her rich dark skin, softly moulded features, and wonderful eyes.
“My people?—my people?” she murmured, half to herself. “Do you know my people? They don’t never work; they plays. They is all little, funny dark people. They flies and creeps and crawls, slippery-like; and they cries and calls. Ah, my people! my poor little people! they misses me these days, because they is shadowy things that sing and smell and bloom in dark and terrible nights—”
Miss Taylor started up. “Zora, I believe you’re crazy!” she cried. But Zora was looking at her calmly again.
“We’se both crazy, ain’t we?” she returned, with a simplicity that left the teacher helpless.
Miss Taylor hurried out, forgetting her pin. Zora looked it over leisurely, and tried it on. She decided that she liked it, and putting it in her pocket, went out too.
School was out but the sun was still high, as Bles hurried from the barn up the big road beside the soft shadows of the swamp. His head was busy with new thoughts and his lips were whistling merrily, for today Zora was to show him the long dreamed of spot for the planting of the Silver Fleece. He hastened toward the Cresswell mansion, and glanced anxiously up the road. At last he saw her coming, swinging down the road, lithe and dark, with the big white basket of clothes poised on her head.
“Zora,” he yodled, and she waved her apron.
He eased her burden to the ground and they sat down together, he nervous and eager; she silent, passive, but her eyes restless. Bles was full of his plans.
“Zora,” he said, “we’ll make it the finest bale ever raised in Tooms; we’ll just work it to the inch—just love it into life.”
She considered the matter intently.
“But,”—presently—“how can we sell it without the Cresswells knowing?”
“We won’t try; we’ll just take it to them and give them half, like the other tenants.”
“But the swamp is mortal thick and hard to clear.”
“We can do it.”
Zora had sat still, listening; but now, suddenly, she leapt to her feet.
“Come,” she said, “I’ll take the clothes home, then we’ll go”—she glanced at him—“down where the dreams are.” And laughing, they hurried on.
Elspeth stood in the path that wound down to the cottage, and without a word Zora dropped the basket at her feet. She turned back; but Bles, struck by a thought, paused. The old woman was short, broad, black and wrinkled, with yellow fangs, red hanging lips, and wicked eyes. She leered at them; the boy shrank before it, but stood his ground.
“Aunt Elspeth,” he began, “Zora and I are going to plant and tend some cotton to pay for her schooling—just the very best cotton we can find—and I heard”—he hesitated—“I heard you had some wonderful seed.”
“Yes,” she mumbled, “I’se got the seed—I’se got it—wonder seed, sowed wid the three spells of Obi in the old land ten tousand moons ago. But you couldn’t plant it,” with a sudden shrillness, “it would kill you.”
“But—” Bles tried to object, but she waved him away.
“Git the ground—git the ground; dig it—pet it, and we’ll see what we’ll see.” And she disappeared.
Zora was not sure that it had been wise to tell their secret.
“I was going to steal the seed,” she said. “I knows where it is, and I don’t fear conjure.”
“You mustn’t steal, Zora,” said Bles, gravely.
“Why?” Zora quickly asked.
But before he answered, they both forgot; for their faces were turned toward the wonder of the swamp. The golden sun was pouring floods of glory through the slim black trees, and the mystic sombre pools caught and tossed back
