e September with a wind blowing from the east.
In the summer, unless held home by some imperative need, all the people
of the plantation, black and white, came in the evening to the wharf to
taste the fresh breeze. But the wharf was long and seclusion possible,
so the two slipped to their favorite place at the far end, and leaning
against a post dangled their feet over the water.

"If it would do any good," Tom said morosely, "I'd run away."

Hertha laughed.

"Ellen thinks she can boss the whole of us," he went on, "but the time
am coming when she can't boss me."

"'Is,' Tom."

"Yes, ma'am."

Tom's speech was a queer mixture of good English acquired from his
sisters, who had been drilled by northern teachers, and colloquial
speech picked up from his surroundings.

"It does seem too bad," Hertha declared, "to leave just now when Mr.
Merryvale has come back and you can have work with some pay."

"I ain't going for more'n a year," Tom declared.

"You'll be grown up by that time."

"I'm as tall as you now."

Hertha looked across the water into the deep, velvet sky, and thought of
the long days in which she would have to go about her work without her
baby. Tom was seven years younger than she and since his birth had been
her special charge. Hundreds of times she had washed his face and his
soft little brown hands to which the grubby earth was as dear as to the
roots of a flower. She it was who had always shielded him from severity,
finding many and ingenious excuses for him. He had grown up a quiet,
serious boy of a meditative cast, and sometimes came out with unusual,
even startling remarks. Tom's "thinking" was one of the jokes of the
family. Hertha found it hard to imagine life without him.

"Do you remember," she said after they had sat silent for a time; "once
I struck you?"

"Naw!"

"Of course you don't remember, you weren't more than three. We were out
visiting at Aunt Mary's and I had dressed you for the afternoon. We were
on the steps. I had some sewing and you slipped away and went off
berrying. Oh, but weren't you a sight when you came back!"

Tom grunted.

"You came right up to me and leaned against my knee, not a bit afraid. I
scolded and you looked up and smiled. You were very little then, seems
to me you weren't more than a baby."

"Yes?"

"I slapped you on your cheek!"

"Whew! I don't believe it would have killed a mosquito."

"You were so grieved! You looked at me as though I had b