“If I did, that was nothing.”
“Oh, no, but then we can lay in the shade all we like and have a nice time, and so we get something to eat and do what we please, what is the difference?”
Zula felt that there was a great difference, and, gypsy though she was, she felt that there was more happiness in having employment and kind friends than all the pleasures of a life of idleness.
“Come, Zu, hurry up, or you will get another flogging.”
“If I do it will not kill me, or, if it does I do not care. I wish it would; I’d rather be dead than live this way.”
“It is too bad, I know, but I don’t see why they whip you that way. I never get such poundings.”
“Because you are good and mind what you are told,” said a harsh, croaking voice at the door.
Zula looked up, but there was neither love nor fear in the gaze that fell on her mother’s face. She had grown reckless as to fear, and so accustomed to the pain inflicted by the strokes of the lash, that had she been commanded to receive fifty, she would have betrayed no emotion.
“Come, you lazy thing, you may as well make yourself useful; you are good for nothing anyway, so you may help to make music for the dance.”