The mild autumn days streamed swiftly past, some warm, some cool, most of them fair. All of them were busy for Mary, who went to the cotton-field almost every day and picked a fair weight of cotton, besides keeping house and making a cozy comfortable home for July. Every morning she got up at first fowl crow, cooked his breakfast and fixed his dinner in a bucket for him to take, before she woke him to get up and dress and eat. The early mornings were chilly, but the shining stars made them beautiful, and the cold dew made the earth smell damp and sweet.
When July had eaten and gone she milked the cow and staked her out to graze, fed the chickens and the fattening shoat in the pen and straightened up the house before she went to the field to join the cotton pickers.
Bright-turbaned women, deep-chested, ample-hipped and strong, bent women with withered skin and trembling uncertain fingers, little gay chocolate-colored children who played as they worked, moved in a group up and down the long
