And with a toss of her head that set her candy-basket swaying and a peal of saw-teeth laughter, she started off, while her would-be teaser found that the laugh was turned on himself.
It was sometimes hard to know when Easter was serious or when she was amusing herself—when she was sensible or when she wandered in her mind. And to the thoughtless it was always hard to take her seriously.
Only those who, through all her miserable rags and absurdities, saw the very poor and pitiful old, old woman, who seemed always to be companionless and alone, would sometimes wonder about her, and, saying a kind and encouraging word, drop a few coins in her slim, black hand without making her lower her basket. Or they would invite her to "call at the house" for some old worn flannels or odds and ends of cold victuals.
And there were a few who never forgot her in their Easter offerings, for which, as for all other gifts, she was requested to "call at the back gate." This seemed, indeed, the only way of reaching the weird old creature, who had for so many years appeared daily upon the streets, nobody seemed to know from where, disappearing with the going down of the sun as mysteriously as the golden disk itself. Of course, if any one had cared to insist upon knowing how she lived or where she stayed at nights, he might have followed her at a distance. But it is sometimes very easy for a very insignificant and needy person to rebuff those who honestly believe themselves eager to help. And so, when Old Easter, the candy-woman, would say, in answer to inquiries about her life, "I sleeps at night 'way out by de Metarie Ridge Cemetery, an' gets up in de mornin' up at de Red Church. I combs my ha'r wid de latanier, an' washes my face in de Ole Basin," it was so easy for those who wanted to help her to say to their consciences, "She doesn't want us to know where she lives," and, after a few simple kindnesses, to let the matter drop.
The above ready reply to what she would have called their "searchin' question" proved her a woman of quick wit and fine imagination. Anybody who knows New Orleans at all well knows that Metarie Ridge Cemetery, situated out of town in the direction of the lake shore, and the old Red Church, by the riverside above Carrollton, are several miles apart. People know this as well as they know that the latanier is the palmetto palm of the Southern wood, with its comb-like, many-toothed leaves, and that the Old Basin is a great pool of scum-covered, murky water, lying in a thickly-settled part of the French town, where numbers of small sailboats, coming in through the bayou with their cargoes of lumber from the coast of the Sound, lie against one another as they discharge and receive their freight.
If all the good people who knew her in her grotesque and pitiful street character had been asked suddenly to name the very poorest and most miserable person in New Orleans, they would almost without doubt have immediately replied, "Why, old Aunt Easter, the candy-woman. Who could be poorer than she?"
To be old and black and withered and a beggar, with nothing to recommend her but herself—her poor, insignificant, ragged self—who knew nobody and whom nobody knew—that was to be poor, indeed.
Of course, Old Easter was not a professional beggar, but it was well known that before she disappeared from the streets every evening one end of her long candy-basket was generally pretty well filled with loose paper parcels of cold victuals, which she was always sure to get at certain kitchen doors from kindly people who didn't care for her poor brown twists. There had been days in the past when Easter peddled light, porous sticks of snow-white taffy, cakes of toothsome sugar-candy filled with fresh orange-blossoms, and pralines of pecans or cocoa-nut. But one cannot do everything.
One cannot be expected to remember General Jackson, spin long, imaginative yarns of forgotten days, and make up-to-date pralines at the same time. If the people who had ears to listen had known the thing to value, this old, old woman could have sold her memories, her wit, and even her imagination better than she had ever sold her old-fashioned sweets.
But the world likes molasses candy. And so Old Easter, whose meagre confections grew poorer as her stories waxed in richness, walked the streets in rags and dirt and absolute obscurity.