"Ouch! Mr. Keebil, you hurt!" cried Lilly, ever tender of scalp.
Nor was Mrs. Becker above a bit of persiflage.
"Mr. Keebil, I hear it is something scandalous the way you and Willie are setting up to each other."
The old shoulders would shake, the face crinkle into a raisin, and the little spade of gray beard heave to the springy laughter.
"Law! Mrs. Beckah. if you ain't the greatest one to joke."
"Joke nothing. It's a fine match. A good upstanding church member like you and a fine-looking woman like Willie."
Lilly would turn a quirking but disapproving eye upon her mother.
"Mamma, haven't you anything better to do?"
"Law! Miss Lilly, me and your ma we understand each other. Me and your papa we know she will have her little joke but the heart is there. That's what counts on the Lord's Judgment Day—the heart."
Lilly's poplin frock was completed for the Friday auditorium exercises. Her two braids, now consolidated into one hempy rope, lay against her back, finishing without completement of hair ribbon into a cylinder of brushed-around-the-finger curl. It was a little mannerism of hers, not entirely unconscious, to fling the heavy coil of hair over one shoulder. It enhanced her face, somehow, the fall of shining plait down over her young bosom. Contrary to her choking expectation, she was not called upon to read, but to sit on the platform in an honorable-mention row of five.