“‘How is she buying you such clothes?’
“‘How long have you been to school?’
“‘Are you reckoning to stay here this winter?’
“‘Are you working for Aunt Ellen?’
“Just like that, Granny.”
Granny gave one of her big laughs, and sat down with Hazel on the steps.
“These people here are just naturally curious, sugar. Don’t you get put out at ’em. I knows the proper city manners. If old man Lee above here should drink himself to death with whiskey, or old mammy Smith down below should burn up in her house, you city folks ’ud just inquire, polite-like, the next time you met one of the family, ‘I heard you-all met with an accident, I’m so sorry. I hope you-all is doing well now.’ But we hasn’t city manners down here. Nothing much happens except the hoeing of the corn and the picking of the cotton; and when a little girl with soft eyes and a pretty dress and sweet ways comes among us, we’s just naturally curious. We wants to see her and learn all about it.”
Hazel laughed, but she still criticized the visitors. “They weren’t pretty or well-dressed and they made mistakes the teacher corrects us for at school. Were they first families?”
Granny looked mystified.
