The gray little cabin crouched in a corner of the big yard; a shed roof, running down at one side of it, looking comically 167 like a hand raised to shut out the clamor. Everybody shouted his opinion at the top of his voice. Nobody thought anybody else was doing just what he ought. Roxana hurried from group to group of the workers, advising, admonishing, trying to bring some order out of the confusion. And in the midst of it, Callista watched the bubbling juice enviously. It seemed everybody had something to harvest, care for and put away, except herself.
CHAPTER XI.
LONG SWEETENIN'.
MARY ANN MARTHA GRIEVER was notorious all over the Big and Little Turkey Track neighborhoods, as "the worst chap the Lord A'mighty ever made and the old davil himself wouldn't have." The mildest dictum pronounced upon her was "Spiled rotten." Her energy, her unsleeping industry, would have been things to admire and wonder at, had they not been always applied to the futherance of iniquitous ends. To-day she pervaded the sorghum-making, not like a gnat, but like a whole swarm of gnats. Providing herself with a weak-backed switch, she followed the movements of Fuson, or Polly, or Sylvane, whichever chanced to be told off to tend the old horse. She pursued the beast with a falsetto screech of peculiar malignance, and tickled his heels with her switch whenever the exigencies of the work forced his stoppage. To the infinite surprise of everybody, notably his owner, the gaunt sorrel, after looking around and twitching his ears and hide as though a particularly troublesome flock of flies were on him, finally heaved up the whole after portion of his anatomy in one elephantine kick, which very nearly cost his 169 small tormentor the entire top of her head.
Chased away from the horse and the crusher, Mary Ann Martha turned her attention to the furnace, with its more seductive and saccharine activities. The skimming hole on this occasion was not the small, ordinary excavation made for the purpose, but a sizable pit, dug at some previous time for a forgotten use. Brush had been thrown into it, vines had grown and tangled over the brush, till it was a miniature jungle or bear-pit. Tin cans hid among the leafage, and the steady drip-drip of the skimmings pattered on one of these hollowly. This spot had a peculiar fascination for the child. Perched on its edge she thrust forward her face and attempted to lick a branch over which the skimmings had trickled deliciously. The distance was considerable. Mary Ann Martha's tongue was limber and amazingly extensible; her balance excellent; but also she was in unseemly haste for the syrup that stood in great drops just beyond reach. In her contortions, she overbalanced herself and fell shrieking in, going promptly to the bottom, where quite a pool of sticky sour-sweetness had already collected.
"The good land!" shouted Roxy, passing the ladle of office to Callista and reaching down to grab for her offspring. "If they's anything you ort not to be in, of course you're in it. Now look at you!" she ejaculated, as she hauled the squalling child out 170 dripping. "You ain't got another frock to yo' name', an' what am I a-goin' to do with you?"
Mary Ann Martha showed a blissful indifference to what might be done with her. Her howls ceased abruptly. She found her state that agreeable one wherein she was able to lick almost any portion of her anatomy or her costume with satisfaction.
"Don't want no other frock," she announced briefly, as she sat down in the dust to begin clearing her hands of skimmings, very like a puppy or a kitten.
"Well, I'm a-goin' to put boy clothes on you," declared the mother. "You act as bad as a boy." And she hustled the protesting delinquent away to execute her threat.