"Lou, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to stuff these children's minds full of lies!" mother said, exasperated out of all semblance of her gentle, even-tempered self by the piled-up mishaps of the afternoon and the anguish of the present moment.
In case you have never heard a calf with his head caught in the fence I will state, under oath, that the diabolical sounds of the Brocken scene in Faust are dulcet music compared with the cry for help that the terrified creature sends forth. It usually brings the neighbors for miles around to find out the cause of the trouble, or rather why the trouble is permitted to continue—for every one who has ever heard it once knows its sound for ever. What an unlovely salute for Prince Charming when he should drive up in the rainy, black night, I was thinking in agony!
Mammy straightened up and looked at mother as steadfastly as she had looked the day she announced her determination of marrying Bill Williams, the "Yankee nigger."
"It's a sin to teach children about the devil!" Mother's voice was a challenge.
"Sin? Why, Mis' Mary!" Mammy's tones were husky with horror. "An' you been a church member for thirty years!"
"Well, the devil has never entered into my calculations in all those thirty years," mother responded hotly, not observing that father had slipped up close behind her and was listening to the theological controversy with an amusement which had routed his rheumatism.
"Well—that's between you an' your Maker," mammy argued stoutly. "I'm goin' to treat my devil with some respeck, if white folks don't mention theirs no mo' than if he was a po' relation that lived in Arkansas!"
Father was smiling almost audibly, but mother was not looking in his direction—and the little Jersey had evidently found no balm in Gilead for his afflicted head!
"I don't believe there's any such thing as a devil!" mother finally broke out with vehemence; and she had turned quickly around as if she would go to the cow-lot herself, when she beheld father standing there, a look of amazement upon his face.
"Mary! Have I lived to hear you deny the faith of your fathers?"