now'll weigh heavy," she
said: "it's got dew on it."

"That's so," Alston assented, "but yer mus'n't talk ter me, Lizay. I's got
ter put all my min' ter my wuck: I can't foad ter talk."

"I can't nuther," said Lizay. "Wish I didn't pick so much cotton the fus'
day: I's got ter keep on trottin' ter two hunderd an' fawty-seven."

She selected two rows beside Alston's. She wore a coarse dress of uncolored
homespun cotton, of the plainest and scantiest make, low in the neck, short
in the sleeves and skirt. Her feet and head were bare. A sack of like
material with her dress was tied about the waist, apron-like. This was to
receive immediately the pickings from the hand. When filled it was emptied
in a pick-basket, holding with a little packing fifty or sixty pounds. This
small basket was kept in the picker's vicinity, being moved forward
whenever the sack was taken back for emptying. Besides this go-between
pick-basket, there was at that end of the row nearest the ginhouse an
immense basket, nearly as tall as a barrel, and of greater circumference,
with a capacity for three hundred pounds.

Alston's pick-basket stood beside Little Lizay's, and between his row and
hers. She was carrying two rows to his one, and he perceived, without
looking and with a vague envy, that Lizay emptied three sacks at least to
his one. Yet she did not seem to be working half as hard as he was. With
light, graceful movements, now right, now left, she plucked the white tufts
and the candelabra-like pendants stretched by the wind and the expanding
lint till the dark seed could be discerned in clusters.

It was near nine o'clock when Alston emptied his first sack, some fifteen
pounds, in the pick-basket, which Little Lizay had brought forward with her
own. Soon after she went back to empty her sack. The baskets stood
hazardously near Alston for Lizay's game, but with her back turned to him
and the luxuriant cotton-stalks between she reckoned she might venture.
One-third of her sack she threw into Alston's basket--about five pounds.
And thus the poor soul did during the day, giving a third of her gatherings
to Alston. She would have given him more--the half, the whole, everything
she owned--for she regarded him with a feeling that would have been called
love in a fairer woman.

Alston had been in Virginia something of a house-servant, doing occasional
duty as coachman when the regular official was ill or was wanted elsewhere.
He was also a good ta