"You let me lay hand on that young 'un," she panted, "and I'll not leave her fitten to do such as this." "Never mind, Ma'y-Ann-Marth'," Little Liza admonished. "You git in and git yo'se'f washed up. For the good land's sake--ef thar don't come Miz. Gentry an' her pa down the road! Mak' 'as'e!" And the sorghum bespattered women hurried toward the house, the widow still fulminating threats, the Hands girls giggling a bit. Callista, trying to carry forward their part of the work, saw that a team stopped out in front. She was aware of her grandfather on the driver's seat, and her mother climbing down over the wheel. "Well, Callista," complained the matron, making straight for the side yard and her daughter, "I reckon if I want to see my own child, I can go to [180] the neighbors and see her there. Why ain't you been home, honey? Pappy axes every morning air you comin', and every night I have to tell him, 'Well, mebbe to-morrow.'" Callista looked over her mother's shoulder, and fancied that she caught a gleam of grim amusement in old Ajax's eye. "I've been mighty busy," she said evasively. "Looks like I don't finish one thing before another needs doing. I'm a-comin' one of these days." "So's Christmas," jeered her grandfather from the wagon. Callista remembered the last time her homecoming had been discussed with him. Her color deepened and her eye brightened. "Yes, and I'm comin' same as Christmas with both hands full of gifts," she called out to him gaily. How dared he look like that--as though he knew all her straits--the shifts to which she was now reduced? There had sounded from the house, on Roxy's arrival there, wails of lamentation in Mary Ann Martha's voice--wails so strident and so offensively prolonged as to convince the least discriminating hearer that their author was not being hurt, but was only incensed. Now, Roxy Griever, hastily washed, made her appearance. "I'm mighty proud to have you here to-day, Miz. Gentry," she said hospitably. "Won't you come into the house? Have you-all fixed for pumpkin [181] cutting? I just as soon as not come over and he'p you, oncet I git this mis'able sawgrum out of the way." "Thank you, Miz. Griever, I won't go in for a spell yet," Octavia said, seating herself on a bench. "No, we ain't had a chance to think o' pumpkin cuttin'. I been dryin' fruit. And Pappy 's had everybody on the place busy pickin' field peas." Callista harkened restively to this talk of the harvest activities, the season's plenty--she who had nothing to garner, nothing to prepare and put away. She heard her mother's voice running plaintively on. "Looks like I got to have somebody with me, since Sis is gone. I've been aimin' to git over to the Far Cove neighborhood where my cousin Filson Luster lives. I know in reason Fil could spare one of his gals, an' I'd do well by her."