"I wish you'd undo 'em and put 'em away for me. Mammy," she said with unusual gentleness. "I think I hear the baby."
"All right, honey, go 'long and 'tend to him. I'll see to these," agreed Octavia patiently.
Callista hurried over to the big house where young Ajax lay 291 asleep, and, as chance would have it, found indeed that he had wakened. She was hushing him on her knee a few minutes later, when her mother appeared in the doorway, a little money held in her trembling hands, and her eyes now openly overflowing.
"That pore boy!" Octavia burst out. "Look what he sent you. Sis! Now, he hain't sold anything of his crop—not yet. The good Lord only knows whar he come by this; but what he could get his hands on, he's sent you."
Callista leaped to her feet and ran to the door, pushing her mother aside none too gently, offending Ajax greatly by her rough handling of him.
"Sylvane!" she cried in the direction of the horse lot where Sylvane had gone to exchange the harness for a saddle on the mule. "Whoo-ee—Sylvane!"
"I'm a-comin'," Sylvane's voice answered, and she turned swiftly to the bed and laid the baby down.
"Give me that money!" she demanded.
"What for?" asked Octavia with unexpected spirit, tucking the bills in against her arm and refusing them.
"I want to send it back by Sylvane."