“Berry well den,” said Bess solemnly. “Ontell she do, I goin’ stan’ on she las’ libbin’ word an’ keep dis chile fuh she ’til she do come back.”
Serena was hopelessly beaten, and she knew it.
“Oh, berry well,” she capitulated. “All I been goin’ tuh do wuz jus’ tuh puhwide um wid er propuh Christian raisin’. But ef she done gib um tuh yuh, dere ain’t nuttin mo’ I kin do, I guess.”
VI
PART VI
OCTOBER blew down from the north, bracing, and frosty-clear. It sent a breeze racing like mad over the bay and bouncing into the court to toss the clotheslines like lanyards of signal flags. The torpid city and wide, slumbrous marshes were stung to sudden life and laughed up at the far, crisp blue of the sky.
Out in the harbor mouth, a faint wisp of smoke grew and blackened, and presently beneath it the rusty hull of a tramp lifted from the Atlantic, and thrust its blunt nose into the waters of the bay.