"What were they doing?" asked Aunt Louise.
Aunt Cordelia answered as one completely exasperated and outdone. "Sitting right down on the ground there in the alley, in their Sunday clothes, watching M'lissy, on her doorstep, comb Letty's hair."
True! Around M'lissy, the mother of Sister, brown herself and kindly, with teeth that flashed white with the smile of her there in the sun, and Letty, the even littler sister of Sister, firm planted on the lowest step, between M'lissy's knees.
And bliss unspeakable as Izzy and Sister and Emmy Lou in a circle on the ground around the doorstep watched. For Letty's head, by means of the comb in M'lissy's hand, was being criss-crossed by partings into sections, bi-sections, and quarter-sections, and such hair as was integral to each wrapped with string in semblance of a plait, plait after plait succeeding one another over Letty's head. The while M'lissy sang in a mounting, joyful chant, interrupted by Letty's outcry now and then beneath the vigor of the ministration.
"Ow-w, Mammy!"
The chant would hold itself momentarily for a reply.
"Shet up," M'lissy would say.
Which would be too much even for laconic Sister who from her place on the ground between Izzy and Emmy Lou would defend Letty. "When Mammy wrops yer h'ar, she wrops hard."
After which the combing and the wrapping and the chanting would go on again, M'lissy's voice rising and falling in quaverings and minors:
"Come to Jesus, come to Jesus,
Come to Jesus just now,
Ju-u-st no-o-w co-o-me to-o Jesus,
Come to Jesus ju-u-st now."