She sang boldly, her full
body rocking from side to side, her bared arms outstretched, her long
throat swelling like a bird's above the gaudy handkerchief upon her breast.
The others followed her, half artlessly, half in imitation, mingling with
their words grunts of self-approval. A grin ran from face to face as if
thrown by the grotesque flash of a lantern. Only a little black woman
crouching in one corner bowed herself and wept.
The children had fallen back against the stone wall, where they hung
staring.
"Good-by, Dolly!" they called cheerfully, and the woman answered with a
long-drawn, hopeless whine:--
"Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we
Meet agin."
Zeke broke from the group and ran a few steps beside the wagon, shaking the
outstretched hands.
The driver nodded peaceably to him, and cut with a single stroke of his
whip an intricate figure in the sand of the road. "Git up an' come along
with us, sonny," he said cordially; but Zeke only grinned in reply, and the
children laughed and waved their handkerchiefs from the wall. "Good-by,
Dolly, and Mirandy, and Sukey Sue!" they shouted, while the women, bowing
over the rolling wheels, tossed back a fragment of the song:--
"We hope ter meet you in heaven, whar we'll
Part no mo',
Whar we'll part no mo';
Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we
Me--et a--gin."
"Twel we meet agin," chirped the little girls, tripping into the chorus.
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