"Oh, now we can have a lot of fun!" cried Bunny, when he saw these playmates. "Will you show me how to pick cotton?" he asked Sam.
"Sure," was the answer. "I help pick it myself, sometimes."
"And will you show me how to dig peanuts?" asked Sue of Grace.
"You don't have to do much digging," answered the little Southern girl, laughing. "You just pull up the vines and the peanuts stick to 'em, same as potatoes do. Course you sometimes have to dig out some that don't come up on the vine."
While Mr. and Mrs. Brown and Mr. and Mrs. Morton were talking together, the children were allowed to go to one of the near-by cotton fields. Cotton, as you know, grows on low bushes, which are planted in long rows, so the pickers may easily walk between them. In some countries the cotton bushes, or plants, last from one year to the next, but in Georgia most of the cotton grows from new bushes each year. The seeds are planted in the spring, but the picking is not finished until sometimes late in what is the winter season of the North.
Of course in some parts of Georgia there are frosts which kill the bushes, and in these parts of the state the cotton must be picked earlier than in the southern part, where the Browns were.
So, though there was cold weather and snow in Bellemere, there were warm, blue skies in Georgia, and the colored men, women and children were out in the fields picking the cotton.
As Bunny Brown and his sister Sue, with Sam and Grace, reached the field of cotton, they could hear the darkies singing. Some one would start a tune, and then others would join in.
"It's jolly!" laughed Bunny, as they stopped to listen to a funny song about a mule.