"Mammy Cely," she said suddenly, in pursuance of this thought, "sometimes it seems to me that we are all of us two persons—one evil and the other good. Sometimes one is on top and sometimes the other. I get tired of the fight."
"That's so, honey!" said Mammy Cely, never pausing in her work, "that's jes' the way it is. Ef you was standin' in the pulpit you couldn't 'spound that doctrine any better 'n what you have. Humph! don't I know! The good Cely been fightin' 'g'inst the bad Cely in me for forty years, chile, an' all on account er that nigger-trader. I been prayin' fur that man ever sence I got religion. Yaas 'm! I had to to git thoo! That's what you has to do—pray fur yo' enemies.
"And now when we're havin' a big meetin' and they all gits to shoutin' and clappin' their hands, and weavin' around, and singin'
'Oh-h, there shall be mo'nin',
Mo'nin', mo'nin', mo'nin',
Oh-h, there shall be mo'nin',
At the jedgment seat of Christ,'
seems lak I git so happy, and see my Savior so plain that I jes' calls out, 'Lord, save that man!' (I know the Lord gwineter know who I mean 'thout me callin' any names.)
"And at that here leaps up that ole black Cely in me (that ole sw'arin', cussin' Cely) and says, 'Yaas, Lord! save him at the last, but shake him over hell fur a while, and swinge him jes' a little bit!'... Then I know I got to git down on my knees and go at it ag'in! Yaas 'm, that's the way we has to fight!"
A few days after this Margaret was sitting at the window in Philip's room late in the afternoon. The quarantine had been raised and Richard had gone to town that day for the first time. Somehow it had been a trying day. Philip had been restless without him. She had been telling him a story, but it had not been a very satisfactory one—Philip had had to make frequent suggestions and amendments, for she was absent-minded and not in her best story-telling vein.