Herein lay all her early wildness
and strangeness. Herein lay, as yet half hidden, dimly sensed and all
unspoken, the power of a mighty all-compelling love for one human soul,
and, through it, for all the souls of men. All this lay growing and
developing; but as yet she was still a girl, with a new shyness and
comeliness and a bold, searching heart.
In the field of the Silver Fleece all her possibilities were beginning
to find expression. These new-born green things hidden far down in the
swamp, begotten in want and mystery, were to her a living wonderful
fairy tale come true. All the latent mother in her brooded over them;
all her brilliant fancy wove itself about them. They were her
dream-children, and she tended them jealously; they were her Hope, and
she worshipped them. When the rabbits tried the tender plants she
watched hours to drive them off, and catching now and then a pulsing
pink-eyed invader, she talked to it earnestly:
"Brer Rabbit--poor little Brer Rabbit, don't you know you mustn't eat
Zora's cotton? Naughty, naughty Brer Rabbit." And then she would show it
where she had gathered piles of fragrant weeds for it and its fellows.
The golden green of the first leaves darkened, and the plants sprang
forward steadily. Never before was such a magnificent beginning, a full
month ahead of other cotton.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133