She had cried and clung to him. With her touch, reason and a rolling moor had faded for him. "I can't leave you," he had said, "I can't! Mary, you come with me." And Mary had come. Those days had been beautiful.... But fortunes in America did not come as advertised. Sometimes Mary thought of green turf, and the gentle drip-drip of fog, like rain. That rain that came so often.... Now she thought of it more than ever. She hoped that the Virgin would allow her a little corner of Heaven that would look like an Irish moor.... The gold the priest talked of was "grand," but heresy or not, she wanted a bit of green, with the gentle drip of rain on it.
Jeremiah bent and kissed her. Then he rubbed the spot of blood of her lip from his. "It wasn't no mistake," he said. Her eyes grew moist.
"Jerry," she said, "Celie is a good kid. She kin do fer yuh. Ain't she, right along? She won't give yuh no trouble neither. But the kid—he ain't so easy. It's the kids growin' up in America better'n their folks, that go to the devil. Watch him, Jerry, watch him good. Won't yuh now?" The man nodded; she closed her eyes. After a few moments that throbbed with the heat of the flat, she spoke again.
"Jerry," she said.
"Darlin'?"
"It's this way, Jerry. I always wanted to be a lady—"
"Yuh are!" he interrupted hotly.
"NOW LAUGH! PAW'S COMING HOME AND
HE NEEDS ALL OUR LAUGHS"