"I ain't tole him 'bout the Jarnettes havin' wolf hearts. _I done kep' it f'um him!_ Nobody ever heared me runnin' down my own white folks." Which was true, but she had never acknowledged the family into which she had been adopted as hers, save the one lone descendant of her young mistress--Richard himself. The rest to her were as Scythians and Barbarians. "I suttingly ain't gwine do it to they offspringers." But Richard was not entirely satisfied. "Well, don't let me hear of his getting any more such notions in his head." "Marse Richard, how I gwineter he'p the convolvolutions of that chile's brain? Why, he axed me the other day is you God." "Asked you what?" "Axed me 'is you God?' Yes, sir, he did. Hit's the truth as I'm standin' here. His ma had tole him there wa'n't nobody could help 'em now but God (it was one er them days she looked lak she was gwineter die, she was so low down), and the next day when he come to me and ax me, wouldn't I _please ma'am_ take him to his mama, just for a little while. I says, not knowin' she done put it on the Almighty,--'Honey,' I say, 'that's fur your Uncle Richard to say.' And at that he look kinder scared, and he crope up close to me, he did, and he say, sorter low like, 'Mammy Cely, is Uncle Richard God?'... So thar now, Marse Richard, you done stan' in the place of his Maker to that chile!" "Go along to your work," said Richard De Jarnette with unwonted roughness, which Mammy Cely did not resent. In fact it rather pleased her. She looked after him as he strode across the lawn. "I reckon I'm 'tendin' to it right now," she observed with an astute nod. "He ain't gwineter furgit that. When a person know he stands in the place of God to a _child_, he gwineter walk straight--less'n he's mons'ous low down." CHAPTER XXIX "INASMUCH--" Weeks lengthened into months and the days grew short. Philip was still praying for Mammy Cely and his uncle Richard, but the black woman's skin was not yet white and Uncle Richard's heart was unchanged. The case dragged its slow length along. The law's procrastination is beyond the comprehension of the lay mind. Margaret chafed at it without avail. "We cannot hurry it," Judge Kirtley told her, "and you would gain nothing if you could. It may be six months before it is settled." During this enforced inactivity and its consequent restlessness Margaret had gone one day to the Children's Home to execute an errand for Mrs. Pennybacker. When she returned, that observant lady looked up at her and said, quietly. "What is it, Margaret?" The girl's face was glowing. "Aunt Mary, I have seen the most beautiful child! So like Philip." "At the Home?"