“I won’t,” said Cozy sullenly. “If I can’t be table-cloth I won’t be dish-rag.”
“All right, you needn’t,” retorted Rickey freezingly. “Sit up, Greenie. People don’t lie on their backs in Sunday-school.”
Greenie yawned dismally, and righted herself with injured slowness. “Ah diffuses ter ’cep’ yo’ insult, Rickey Snydah,” she said. “Ah’d ruthah lose mah ’ligion dan mah laz’ness. En Ah ’spises yo’ ’spisable dissisition!”
“Let us all rise,” continued Rickey, unmoved, “and sing Kingdom Coming.” And she struck up lustily, beating time on the stump with a stick:
“From all the dark places of earth’s heathen races,
O, see how the thick shadows flee!”
and the rows of children joined in with unction, the colored contingent coming out strong on the chorus:
“De yerf shall be full ob de wunduhful story
As watahs dat covah de sea!”
The clear voices in the quiet air startled the fluttering birds and sent a squirrel to the tip-top of an oak, from which he looked down, flirting his brush. They roused a man, too, who had lain in a sodden sleep under a bush at a little distance. He was ragged and soiled and his heavy brutal face, covered with a dark stubble of some days’ growth, had an ugly scar slanting from cheek to hair. Without getting up, he rolled over to command a better view, and set his eyes, blinking from their slumber, on the children.
“We will now take up the collection,” said Rickey. (“You can do it, June. Use a flat piece of bark). Remember that what we give to-day is for the poor heathen in—in Alabama.”