"Marse Richard, is you ever tried to pacify a homesick chile?"
"No, you know I haven't, but—"
"Well, sho's you born, sir, 'taint no easy job."
"A child of five and a half is old enough to be reasoned with," he declared.
"Marse Richard, you can't reason homesickness out of a grown person, let alone a baby! I been discoursin' to him fur an hour on that tex' but he don't seem to sense the argyments. Maybe he would ef they was white, but he don't 'spond to the colored ones. No, sir! I done got to the end of my rope. I don't know what to do. Look lak he gwine cry hisself to death."
"He was all right this afternoon, wasn't he?"
"Yes, sir, long as daylight lasted. He tuk right smart intrus helpin' me feed the chickens and put 'em in the hovels, but—Marse Richard, when dark comes it's the nacher of a child to want its mother. They can't he'p they nachers."
He did not answer her. In his ears the impassioned cry was sounding, "And Nature's law is God's very own!"
In his perplexity—for Mammy Cely was persistently, though humbly, waiting for instructions—Richard De Jarnette remembered the picture that Bess had given him. With a faint spasm of hope he took it from his pocket and put it in the hand of the old woman.
"Here, show him this. Let him take it to bed with him. That young girl that came on with his mother gave it to me. She said it might help him if he was homesick."