declared seriously. "Auntie is gwine to school. E ain' told you?" Mary could not help grinning in spite of the black frown on Ben's face. "You ain' heard about a new law de white folks is made?"
Ben had not heard, and Mary tried to explain to him that the new law said people must no longer birth children like they used to. The white folks had a new way to do it now, and Maum Hannah and all the plantation midwives had to go to the midwife class at Heaven's Gate Church for ten Monday mornings while a lady from up-north tried to make them understand all about the new style. "Great Gawd, ain' it de funniest ting you ever did hear?" Mary laughed so that the thick piece of wood she sat on suddenly slipped.
"Do Jedus," she cried out in alarm, "don' le me fall an' broke my leg to-day. I got some birthin to do my own sef before long."
Budda Ben did not turn his head. He sat glum and down-hearted and silent while she chattered on trying to cheer him up. White people are curious things. They pass laws no matter how fool the laws are, and put people in jail if those laws are not kept. People had come into the world over the same old road ever since Eve birthed Cain and Abel, and now,
