“Pow'ful bad, pow'ful bad,” said the Bishop—“and you three made Zion.”
“We wus,” said Aunt Maria, sadly—“but now there ain't but one lef'. I'm Zion. It's t'arrable, but it's true. As it wus in the days of Lot, so it is to-day in Sodom.”
“Why, how did that happen?” asked the Bishop.
Aunt Maria's eyes kindled: “It's t'arrable, but it's true—last week Parson Shadrack deserts his own wife an' runs off with Sis Tilly. It looked lak he mouter tuck me, too, an' kept the fold together as Abraham did when he went into the Land of the Philistines. But thank God, if I am all that's lef', one thing is mighty consolin'—I can have a meetin' of Zion wherever I is. If I sets down in a cheer to meditate I sez to myself—'Be keerful, Maria, for the church is in session.' When I drink, it is communion—when I bathes, it is baptism, when I walks, I sez to myself: 'Keep a straight gait, Maria, you are carryin' the tabbernackle of all goodness.' Aunt Tilly got the preacher, but thank God, I got Zion.”
“But I mus' go. Come on, Lily,” she said to the little girl,—“let ole Zion fix up yo' curls.”
She took her charge and curtsied out, and the Bishop knew she would die either for Zion or the little girl.
The old man sat thinking—Helen had gone in and was practising a love song.
“Ned,” said the Bishop, “I tell you a man ain't altogether friendless when he's got in his home a creature as faithful as she is. She'd die for that child. That one ole faithful 'oman makes me feel like liftin' my hat to the whole nigger race. I tell you when I get to heaven an' fail to see ole Mammy settin' around the River of Life, I'll think somethin' is wrong.”
The Bishop was silent a while, and then he asked: “Ned, it can't be true that you are goin' to put them girls in the factory?”
“It's all I can do,” said Conway, surlily—“I'll be turned out of home soon—out in the public road. Everything I've got has been sold. I've no'where to go, an' but for Carpenter's offer from the Company of the cottage, I'd not have even a home for them. The only condition I could go on was that—”