"Here's your feast," she called to them in the gay tone we use
with sick children. "Come, Ellen. I'll go down and give your
father his dinner, and you two can play any kind of party you
want to with this."
The little girl with skin like white cotton cloth rolled her big,
gray eves toward the tray and asked listlessly, "What you got for
dinner, ma?" The brown-skinned one, tidily dressed from her
carefully combed head with its crisp, black mass that was
scarcely hair, held in place by spick-and-span hair ribbons, to
the toes of her stout, handsome shoes, got up quickly and came
forward to arrange the meal.
"They's molasses pie, Nell," Ma'Lou said joyously. "Oh, I'm going
to bring it over there and fix it by the side of the lounge.
We'll play you' a sick lady, and I'm you' trained nurse. Just
wait till I fix my handkerchief into a cap like they wear."
Mrs. Kendrick turned away and left the children at their play.
Mary Louise Jackson had been kept at home from school that she
might come over and spend the day with Ellen. For when Ellen
Kendrick was ill, her cry always was, "Oh, send for the
doctor--and Mary Louise."
The old Kendrick place sat back in its grassy yard and concealed
behind voluminous chinaberry trees such shabbiness as time had
brought it; but on the corner, the home of Ezra Jackson perched
proudly above its stone wall and added a considerable touch of
elegance to the street.
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