It was amid these surroundings, sufficient in themselves, one would have said, to hinder physical, mental, and moral growth, that the girl Selina Jo was born. The occasion was in no sense of the word an event with Shug and Marthy. Since all married people of their acquaintance had children, the baby simply represented, to them, the inevitable. With the birth of the child, though, Marthy became barren. For the first eighteen months of her existence the baby crawled about the cabin unnamed. Then it occurred to Marthy that their offspring ought to be christened. “Shug,” she suggested casually, “seems to me we ort to be namin’ that air young ’un.” Shug, lolling in the shade of a water oak, shifted his quid and spat disinterestedly. “I ain’t objectin’ none,” he replied. “How ’bout callin’ her ‘S’liny Jo’?” Marthy asked. “Fittin’ enough name fer her, I reckin,” Shug yawned. As the child grew up she came to accept her parents as they had long since accepted her--merely as a bald fact. There was never the slightest evidence of parental affection upon the one side or of filial attachment upon the other. Once Marthy came upon Shug whipping the girl with a switch. “What you whippin’ her fer?” she asked. Her tone was one of simple curiosity, nothing else. “All young ’uns needs it,” Shug replied virtuously, as he tossed the switch aside. “Hadn’t been my daddy usetah whale me powerful, I wouldn’t a been nigh the man I am now; not nigh.” It was a matter for remark between the parents that, even at a tender age, Selina Jo rarely emitted any outcry under punishment. There burned in her sloe-black eyes, though, the flame of an emotion which she checked upon the surface. One would have expected the girl to respond to the influence of heredity. Her parents, the cattle, the hogs, even the crops about her were stunted, half-starved in appearance. By contrast, Selina Jo, upon a daily ration made up almost exclusively of corn pone, molasses, and home-cured pork as salt as ocean brine, defied all known dietary laws, and flourished amazingly. She was precocious, too. When she was only seven years old she could swear just as well--rather, just as wickedly--as could Shug himself. She learned early, though, that, as a source of information, her parents were practically _nil_. Thenceforth, the questions that had rushed to her lips were succeeded by a look of eternal interrogation in her sombre eyes. It was shortly after her twelfth birthday that a young school-teacher--the only one the community ever knew--came into the Hudsill settlement. Selina Jo was grudgingly allowed to attend the school. For six months the young man’s enthusiasm held out. Then it waned and died. Few of the older people could either read or write, and the opinion among them seemed to be universal that what was good enough for them was good enough for their offspring. But before the school closed Selina Jo had learned the alphabet and a portion of the old-fashioned first reader.