Fifteen years passed and although everything on the plantation looked much the same, many changes had crept in. The pots on Mary's hearth were always full, the pig-pen always kept a shoat fattening on the scraps of food that were left; a flock of hens with red ripe combs clucked and cackled around her door and greens kept her vegetable garden lively; food was plentiful and everybody in her house had plenty to eat. But the old house itself needed help, and June was not there to fix it. The old rock pillars were crumbling and they let the solid weight of the building's square body lean to one side. The front door sagged and scraped on the floor; the board window-blinds drooped on their hinges, one-sided and out of shape. Thank God, the old clay chimney was still firm on its foundations, able to breathe out smoke day after day; and the green moss on the roof held the frayed—shingles together from the warped ridge-pole to the edge of the rotting eaves.
Food was plentfiul but money was scarce, for the cotton-fields which had always provided
