"--I reckon, sir, you got to come up sta'rs to that chile. I can't do nothin' with him." "What's the matter with him? Is he sick?" "He's wuss'n sick! He's homesick." "Can't you quiet him some way--by rocking him or something of that sort?" He had a vague idea that rocking was a panacea for all childish ills. "Marse Richard, that chile done pass the cradle age. And look lak he don't crave nobody's lap but his ma's." "Why don't you tell him stories? You know how to quiet a child." "I done tole him all I know," said Mammy Cely,--which was not at all the truth, for she had an unlimited supply and had purposely withheld them,--"but he don't seem to take no _in_trus. He's in that ongodly state of mind he don' keer _what_ turnt the robin's breas' red! No, sir! He wants his ma!" "Well, tell him he can't have her,--that she is sick and can't come." "My Lord, Marse Richard! I done tole him that fifty times! But he don't accep' the pronouncement. He say he's bleeged to see his ma." Mr. De Jarnette scowled. "It is a strange thing to me that you can't quiet a five-year old child," he said, looking very straight at her. Mammy Cely returned the look unflinchingly. Anybody that sought to overawe her had entered upon a large contract. "Marse Richard, is you ever tried to pacify a homesick chile?" "No, you know I haven't, but--" "Well, sho's you born, sir, 'taint no easy job." "A child of five and a half is old enough to be reasoned with," he declared. "Marse Richard, you can't reason homesickness out of a grown person, let alone a baby! I been discoursin' to him fur an hour on that tex' but he don't seem to sense the argyments. Maybe he would ef they was white, but he don't 'spond to the colored ones. No, sir! I done got to the end of my rope. I don't know what to do. Look lak he gwine cry hisself to death." "He was all right this afternoon, wasn't he?" "Yes, sir, long as daylight lasted. He tuk right smart _in_trus helpin' me feed the chickens and put 'em in the hovels, but--Marse Richard, when dark comes it's the nacher of a child to want its mother. They can't he'p they nachers." He did not answer her. In his ears the impassioned cry was sounding, "And Nature's law is God's very own!" In his perplexity--for Mammy Cely was persistently, though humbly, waiting for instructions--Richard De Jarnette remembered the picture that Bess had given him. With a faint spasm of hope he took it from his pocket and put it in the hand of the old woman. "Here, show him this. Let him take it to bed with him. That young girl that came on with his mother gave it to me. She said it might help him if he was homesick." Mammy Cely took the photograph and looked at it with interest, shaking her head and setting her lips together.