"
"Ah! that must be beautiful," sighed Miss Taylor, wistfully, sinking to
the ground and clasping her hands about her knees.
"Yes, ma'am. But it's prettiest when the bolls come and swell and burst,
and the cotton covers the field like foam, all misty--"
She bent wondering over the pale plants. The poetry of the thing began
to sing within her, awakening her unpoetic imagination, and she
murmured:
"The Golden Fleece--it's the Silver Fleece!"
He harkened.
"What's that?" he asked.
"Have you never heard of the Golden Fleece, Bles?"
"No, ma'am," he said eagerly; then glancing up toward the Cresswell
fields, he saw two white men watching them. He grasped his hoe and
started briskly to work.
"Some time you'll tell me, please, won't you?"
She glanced at her watch in surprise and arose hastily.
"Yes, with pleasure," she said moving away--at first very fast, and then
more and more slowly up the lane, with a puzzled look on her face.
She began to realize that in this pleasant little chat the fact of the
boy's color had quite escaped her; and what especially puzzled her was
that this had not happened before. She had been here four months, and
yet every moment up to now she seemed to have been vividly, almost
painfully conscious, that she was a white woman talking to black folk.
Now, for one little half-hour she had been a woman talking to a boy--no,
not even that: she had been talking--just talking; there were no persons
in the conversation, just things--one thing: Cotton.
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