Then lowering his curly head again he repeated in an entirely conversational tone:
"God bless my mama and bwing her back to her dear little boy; and God bless Gwanma Pennybacker; and God bless Bess and make her a good girl; and God bless Mammy Cely and make her white—be sure to make her white, cause she wants to be, and you forgot her druthers when you made her; and God bless Uncle Wichard, and take away his stony heart."
He stopped suddenly, thinking that perhaps he ought not to have said this.
"Where did you hear that, Philip?"
"My mama said so. Unker Wichard, what is a stony heart?"
Richard De Jarnette laughed a rather mirthless laugh, but did not answer the question.
"I suppose your mama has told you a number of pleasant things about me," he said, and his tone had an infusion of bitterness in it. The opinion of this midget was becoming important to him.
"She said she didn't believe that anything would ever change your heart; but Gwanma Pennybacker said God could do anything—He could change it—and I must ask Him every night to take away your stony heart and give you a—a—" he was trying very hard to recall the words—"a heart—of—I don't know—somefin'—but it wasn't stone."
"I am afraid you have two rather tough propositions, Philip,—my heart and Mammy Cely's skin."
"But she's turning, Unker Wichard," the child declared eagerly. "She is! I saw it on the inside of her hands when she was washing. They are 'most white now." Then earnestly, "Unker Wichard, is yo' heart stone?"