"Laws, Miz. Griever," began Ellen Hands, solemnly, "looks like yo' family ort to be perfectly happy with that thar quilt in the house. I'm mighty shore I would be. I tell you, sech a work as that is worth a woman's while." "There's them that thinks different," responded [175] Roxy, with a sort of gloomy yet relishing resentment. "There has been folks lived in this house from the time I started work on it, an' made game of my gospel quilt--made game of it!" "I reckon I know who you mean," nodded Ellen. And Little Liza added, "_She's_ here to-day, ain't she?--God love her sweet soul! But yo' pappy wouldn't bid Lance, with Buddy here an' all--we know that. They'd be shore to fuss. Man persons is that-a-way." "Well," Ellen Hands summed the case up, "ef anybody made game o' that quilt to my face, I'd never forgive 'em." "I never will," agreed Roxy. "Them that would make game of sech is blasphemious. Mebbe hit ain't adzactly the Bible, but hit's--" "Hit's mo' so," put in Ellen swiftly. "The Bible is pertected like, but yo' gospel quilt is standin' up alone, as a body may say, and you've got to speak for it. No, ef I was you, and anybody made game of that thar quilt, I never would forgive 'em." Outside, Callista stood and skimmed and skimmed, from time to time emptying her pan into the skimming-hole, the bland October breeze lifting her fair hair. Everything was sour-sweet and sticky from the juice. Heaps of pomace were already beginning to pile tall beside the crusher, reeking, odorous, tempting to the old cow, who went protestingly past, and had the bars put up [176] after her. Kimbro looked up from his task and spoke to his daughter-in-law. "You look sort o' peaked, Callista," he said gently. "Air you right well?" "Oh yes, Father Cleaverage," she returned, absently, her eyes on Mrs. Griever and the Hands girls approaching from the house. The unsexed and hostile Mary Ann Martha turned upon the world at large a look of mute defiance, and completed an enterprise which she had set up of laying fresh sorghum stalks side-by-side, pavement-wise, over the skimming-hole. Women and children were settling like flies about the pan and its attendant bowls, ladles and testing plates, hoping for a taste of the finished product. The Hands girls greeted Callista and joined the others. Fuson's poor little seventeen-year-old sister-in-law was there with her six months baby, and a child of two. Roxy took the skimmer from Callista and set to work. Sylvane relieved his father at the firing. Mary Ann Martha sidled into the house, whence, a moment later, came a shrill cry in Polly's thin little pipe. "Aunt Roxy! Mary Ann Marthy's in here puttin' molasses all _over_ yo' gospel quilt!" "Good land!" snorted Roxy, straightening up from her task of skimming. "Take the spoon, Sylvane." She cast the ladle toward him without much care as to whether the handle or the bowl [177] went first. "Looks like I do have the hardest time o' anybody I know," she ejaculated.