ll," said Cozy, tossing her head till the flower earrings danced,
"I'm going to get married if the man hasn't got anything but a character
and a red mustache. Married women don't have to prove they could have
got a husband if they had wanted to."

"Let's play something," proposed Rosebud Meredith, on whom the
discussion palled. "Let's play King, King Katiko."

"It's Sunday!"--this from her smaller and more righteous sister. "We're
forbidden to play anything but Bible games on Sunday, and if Rosebud
does, I'll tell."

"Jay-bird tattle-tale!" sang Rosebud derisively. "Don't care if you do!"

"Well," decreed Rickey. "We'll play Sunday-school then. It would take a
saint to object to that. I'm superintendent and this stump's my desk.
All you children sit down under that tree."

They ranged themselves in two rows, the white children, in clean
Sabbath pinafores and go-to-meeting knickerbockers, in front and the
colored ones, in ginghams and cotton-prints, in the rear--the habitual
expression of a differing social station. "Oh!" shrieked Miss Cabell,
"and I'll be Mrs. Merryweather Mason and teach the infants' class."

"There isn't any infant class," said Rickey. "How could there be when
there aren't any infants? The lesson is over and I've just rung the bell
for silence. Children, this is Missionary Sunday, and I'm glad to see so
many happy faces here to-day. Cozy," she said, relenting, "you can be
the organist if you want to."

"I won't," said Cozy sullenly. "If I can't be table-cloth I won't be
dish-rag."

"All right, you needn't," retorted Rickey freezingly. "Sit up, Greenie.
People don't lie on their backs in Sunday-school."

Greenie yawned dismally, and righted herself with injured slowness.
"Ah diffuses ter 'cep' yo' insult, Rickey Snydah," she said. "Ah'd
ruthah lose mah 'ligion dan mah laz'ness. En Ah 'spises yo' 'spisable
dissisition!"

"Let us all rise," continued Rickey, unmoved, "and sing _Kingdom
Coming_." And she struck up lustily, beating time on the stump with a
stick:

"From all the dark places of earth's heathen races,
O, see how the thick shadows flee!"

and the rows of children joined in with unction, the colored contingent
coming out strong on the chorus:

"De yerf shall be full ob de wunduhful story
As watahs dat covah de sea!"

The clear voices in the quiet air startled the fluttering birds and sent
a squirrel to the tip-top of an oak, from which he looked down, f