"Chris," she said, "we'll have a plain talk now. This is the fourth time you've been"--the word came with difficulty--"drunk." "Yes'm." "I've sent you away three times, and three times I've let you come back. I let you come back after new Christmas, only twelve days ago." "Yes'm." "You can't keep your word." "No'm." "I don't know what to do now, so I'm going to ask you." She paused and Chris was silent, but he was thinking, and she waited. Presently he looked straight into her eyes, still silent. "What do _you_ think I'd better do?" she insisted. "I reckon you got to whoop me, Miss Hildy." "But you know I can't whip you, Chris. I never whip anybody." Several times a child had offered to whip himself, had done so, and she wondered whether the boy would propose that, but he repeated, obstinately and hopelessly: "You got to whoop me." "I won't--I can't." Then an idea came. "Your mother will have to whip you." Chris shook his head and was silent. He was not on good terms with his mother. It was a current belief that she had "put pizen in his daddy's liquer." She had then married a man younger than she was, and to the boy's mind the absence of dignity in one case matched the crime in the other. "All right," he said at last; "but I reckon you better send somebody else atter her. You can't trust me to git by that still"--he stopped with a half-uttered oath of surprise: "Look thar!" A woman was coming up the road. She wore a black cotton dress and a black sunbonnet--mourning relics for the dead husband which the living one had never had the means to supplant--and rough shoes. She pushed back the bonnet with one nervous, bony hand, saw the two figures on the edge of the creek, and without any gesture or call came toward them. And only the woman's quickness in St. Hilda saw the tense anxiety of the mother's face relax. The boy saw nothing; he was only amazed. "Why, mammy, whut the--whut are you doin' up hyeh?" The mother did not answer, and St. Hilda saw that she did not want to answer. St. Hilda rose with a warm smile of welcome. "So this is Chris's mother?" The woman shook hands limply. "Hit's whut I passes fer," she said, and she meant neither smartness nor humor. The boy was looking wonderingly, almost suspiciously at her, and she saw she must give him some explanation. "I been wantin' to see the school hyeh an' Miss Hildy. I had to come up to see Aunt Sue Morrow, who's might' nigh gone, so I jes kep' a-walkin' on up hyeh." "Miss Hildy hyeh," said the boy, "was jes about to send fer ye." "To sen' fer _me_?" "I been drunk agin." The mother showed no surprise or displeasure. "Hit's the fourth time since sorghum time," the boy went on relentlessly. "I axed Miss Hildy hyeh to whoop me, but she says she don't nuver whoop nobody, so she was jes a-goin' to send fer you to come an' whoop me when you come a-walkin' up the road."