At the conviction a feeling of terror began to gain ground. She was like a creature enmeshed in a net weak in its cordage, but many-stranded and hampering; turn whichever way she would some petty restriction met her. She moved aimlessly forward, reasonably sure that she was not followed or observed, since she was going away from rather than toward the Card place. About a mile from the cabin of old Hannah Updegrove, a weaver of rag carpet, she suddenly came upon two little creatures sitting at a tree-foot playing about one of those druidical-looking structures that the childhood of the man and the childhood of the race alike produce. It was Little Buck and Beezy come to spend the day with old Hannah who, on their father’s side, was kin of theirs, and making rock play-houses in the tree-roots to put over the time. Judith ran to the children, gathered them close, and hugged them to her with whispered endearments in which some tears mingled.
Then for half an hour followed the schooling of Little Buck for the message which he was to carry, and which Beezy must be so diverted that she would not even hear.
Judith plaited grass bracelets for the fat little wrists, fashioned bonnets of oak leaves, pinning them together with grass stems, and then sending Beezy far afield to gather flowers for their trimming. On long journeys the little feet trudged, to where the beautiful, frail, white meadow lilies rose in clumps from the lush grass of the lowlands. She fetched cardinal flowers from the mud and shallow water beyond them, or brought black-eyed Susans from the sun of open spaces. And during these expeditions Judith’s catechism of the boy went on.
“How you goin’ to git home, Little Buck?”
“Pappy’s a-comin’ by to fetch us.”
“When?”
“A little befo’ sundown?”
“You goin’ straight home?”
“Yes, Jude, we’ goin’ straight home to Granny, why?”