“I ain’t!”

“You are!”

“I ain’t!”

“’Spose you fight it out,” suggested Eugenia, with an eye for sport, settling herself upon the ground with Jim in her lap.

Nicholas picked up his fishing line and wound it slowly round the cork.  “There’s a powerful lot of minnows in this creek,” he remarked amicably.  “When you lean over that log you can catch ’em in your hat.”

“Let’s do it,” said Eugenia, starting up, and they went out upon the slippery log between the reedy banks.  Over the smooth, pebbly bed of the stream flashed the shining bodies of hundreds of minnows, passing back and forth with brisk wriggles of their fine, steel-coloured tails.  On the Battle side of the bank a huge, blue-winged dragonfly buzzed above the flaunting red and yellow faces of three tiger-lilies.

Jim sat on the brookside and watched the minnows, having ventured midway upon the log, to retreat at the sight of his own reflection in the water.

“He’s a coward,” said Bernard teasingly, alluding to the recreant Jim.  “I wouldn’t have a dog that was a coward.”

“He ain’t a coward,” returned Eugenia passionately.  “He jes’ don’t like looking at his own face, that’s all.  Here, Nick, hand me your hat.”

Nick obediently gave her his hat, and Eugenia leaned over the stream, her bare arms and vivid face mirrored against the silvery minnows, when a shrill call came from the house.

“Nick!  Who-a Ni-ck!”

“That’s Sairy Jane,” said Nicholas, reaching for his hat.  “Ma wants me.”

“Who is Sairy Jane?”

“Sister.”

Eugenia handed him his dripping hat, and stood shaking her fingers free from the sparkling drops.

“Will you come and fish with me to-morrow?” she asked.

“If I ain’t got to work in the field—­”

“Don’t work.”

“Can’t help it.”

The call was repeated, and Nicholas sped over the mossy log and across the ploughed field, while Bernard and Eugenia toiled up the hillside.

As they passed the Sweet Gum Spring they saw Delphy, the washerwoman, standing in her doorway, quarrelling with her son-in-law, Moses, who was hoeing a small garden patch in the rear of an adjoining cabin.  Delphy was a large mulatto woman, with a broad, flat bosom and enormous hands that looked as if they had been parboiled into a livid blue tint.

“‘Tain’ no use fer to hoe groun’ dat ain’ got no richness,” she was saying, shaking her huge head until the dipper hanging on the lintel of the door rattled, “en’tain’ no use preachin’ ter a nigger dat ain’ got no gumption.  Es de tree fall, so hit’ gwine ter lay, en es a fool’s done been born, so he gwine ter die.  ‘Tain’ no use a-tryin’ fer to do over a job dat de Lawd done slighted.  You may ding about hit en you may dung about hit, but ef’n it won’t, hit won’t.”

Moses, a meek-looking negro with an honest face, hoed silently, making no response to his mother-in-law’s vituperations, which grew voluble before his non-resistance.