“Everybody doesn’t get married,” said one of the Byloe twins, with masculine assurance. “Maybe he won’t.”
“Much a boy knows about it!” retorted Cozy scornfully. ”Women have to, and some one of them will make him. (Greenville Female Seminary Simms, if you slap that little nigger again, I’ll slap you!)”
Greenie rolled over on the grass and tittered. “Miss Mattie Sue didn’,” she said. “Ah heah huh say de yuddah day et wuz er moughty good feelin’ ter go ter baid Mistis en git up Marstah!”
“Well,” said Cozy, tossing her head till the flower earrings danced, “I’m going to get married if the man hasn’t got anything but a character and a red mustache. Married women don’t have to prove they could have got a husband if they had wanted to.”
“Let’s play something,” proposed Rosebud Meredith, on whom the discussion palled. “Let’s play King, King Katiko.”
“It’s Sunday!”—this from her smaller and more righteous sister. “We’re forbidden to play anything but Bible games on Sunday, and if Rosebud does, I’ll tell.”
“Jay-bird tattle-tale!” sang Rosebud derisively. “Don’t care if you do!”
“Well,” decreed Rickey. “We’ll play Sunday-school then. It would take a saint to object to that. I’m superintendent and this stump’s my desk. All you children sit down under that tree.”
They ranged themselves in two rows, the white children, in clean Sabbath pinafores and go-to-meeting knickerbockers, in front and the colored ones, in ginghams and cotton-prints, in the rear—the habitual expression of a differing social station. “Oh!” shrieked Miss Cabell, “and I’ll be Mrs. Merryweather Mason and teach the infants’ class.”
“There isn’t any infant class,” said Rickey. “How could there be when there aren’t any infants? The lesson is over and I’ve just rung the bell for silence. Children, this is Missionary Sunday, and I’m glad to see so many happy faces here to-day. Cozy,” she said, relenting, “you can be the organist if you want to.”