A negro girl, Prudie, cooked the meals, passing quickly from the cooking range to the tables, to the pantry. Her face shaded from one brown to another and the sweat ran in the neat wrinkles across her neck. She seemed neither glad nor sorry the guests had come. Miss Doe would give her pans of flour, sugar, or meal, or cuts of ham, all from the locked storeroom. “Be sure to take out a plenty,” she would say at the door, the keys in her fingers. When the uncle and the grandfather were away for a meal those left at home were served in the breakfast-room behind the dining-room, and Prudie instead of Lucas carried in the food. One day soon after the visit began Miss Doe sent the children to carry a message to a cabin back in the farm. Theodosia knew the way, for she had been for a walk in that direction with her uncle. There were clouds in the sky threatening a shower, and the aunt told the little girls to take the old cotton umbrella from the back porch. They walked across the pasture and climbed over a gate into a cornfield, and it was pleasant to walk under the umbrella, treading on the shadow that moved with them down the field. The path was well beaten, for Prudie lived in the cabin with her mother, Aunt Deesie, and with Uncle Red. The cabin stood in a cove under some trees, a place where two hills began. Aunt Deesie was washing clothes in the yard, and all the lines were filled with white things hung to dry. A great kettle of boiling clothes steamed over a wood fire on the ground. The air about was pleasantly cool from the wooded hills behind the house, and a pleasant odor of lye soap spread about when the boiling kettle was dipped of its garments. Aunt Deesie was tall and strong, and she moved slowly among the tubs and kettles, keeping an even gait. On a quilt safely removed from the fire a small baby lay asleep, and two other small children ran about the yard or clung to Aunt Deesie’s skirt when Theodosia gave her message. These were Prudie’s children. “Yes’m,” Aunt Deesie said. “Tell your Aunt Doe she didn’t send me down no blues. To clear the white clo’s. Tell your Aunt Doe all the blues is gone, the bluen.” Theodosia stood about in the cool of Aunt Deesie’s yard, fascinated by the work that went forward and by the sweet smell of the lye, by the smell of Aunt Deesie’s warm body leaning over the tubs. The baby waked and squirmed on the quilt, working its arms and legs about, and Aunt Deesie stopped her washing to pin a fresh rag about its hips, trying to hide what she did because the rag was old and without a hem. Theodosia saw her slip the soiled rag under the wash-bench and she was fascinated by her shame. The baby was dark brown, a boy child, and the two that ran about under Aunt Deesie’s feet were girls, their heads a tight nap of thin wool. Aunt Deesie would push them gently aside and move from tub to tub, her voice gentle as she worked. “Why don’t you-all chil’n talk to the white gals. White gals come to see you-all.”