“Qua-a-ck, quack, quack,” the young Negro mocked, and passed on grinning.

“Dat doan worry me none; I doan let nothin worry me.  Worry makes folks gray-headed.”  She scratched her head where three gray braids, about the length and thickness of a flapper’s eyebrow, stuck out at odd angles.

“I sho got plenty chancet to worry ifen I wants to,” she mused, as she sipped water from a fruit-jar foul with fingermarks.  “Relief folks got me on dey black list.  Dey won’t give me rations—­dey give rations to young folks whas workin, but won’t give me nary a mouthful.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, dey wanted me to go to de poor house.  I was willin to go, but I wanted to take my trunk along an dey wouldn’t let me.  I got some things in dere I been havin nigh onta a hunnert years.  Got my old blue-back Webster, onliest book I ever had, scusin my Bible.  Think I wanna throw dat stuff away?  No-o, suh!” Mama Duck pushed the dog away from a cracked pitcher on the floor and refilled her fruit-jar.  “So day black list me, cause I won’t kiss dey feets.  I ain kissin nobody’s feets—­wouldn’t kiss my own mammy’s.”

“Well, we’d all do lots of things for our mothers that we wouldn’t do for anyone else.”

“Maybe you would, but not me.  My mammy put me in a hickry basket when I was a day an a half old, with nothin on but my belly band an diaper.  Took me down in de cotton patch an sot me on a stump in de bilin sun.”

“What in the world did she do that for?”

“Cause I was black.  All de other younguns was bright.  My granmammy done hear me bawlin an go fotch me to my mammy’s house.  ‘Dat you mammy?’ she ask, sweet as pie, when granmammy pound on de door.

“‘Doan you never call me mammy no more,’ granmammy say.  ’Any woman what’d leave a poor lil mite like dis to perish to death ain fitten to be no datter o’ mine.’

“So granmammy took me to raise.  I ain never seen my mammy sincet, an I ain never wanted to.”

“What did your father think of the way she treated you?”

“Never knew who my daddy was, an I reckon she didn’t either.”

“Do you remember anything about the Civil War?”

“What dat?”

“The Civil War, when they set the slaves free.”

“Oh, you mean de fust war.  I reckon I does—­had three chillern, boys, borned fore de war.  When I was old enough to work I was taken to Pelman, Jawja.  Dey let me nust de chillern.  Den I got married.  We jus got married in de kitchen and went to our log house.

“I never got no beatins fum my master when I was a slave.  But I seen collored men on de Bradley plantation git frammed out plenty.  De whippin boss was Joe Sylvester.  He had pets amongst de women folks, an let some of em off light when they deserved good beatins.”

“How did he punish his ’pets’?”

“Sometimes he jus bop em crosst de ear wid a battlin stick.”