Perceiving that he had Little Lizay’s sympathy, Alston went on talking, telling her that he could stand a lashing coming from his own master, but that an overseer was only white trash, who never did “own a nigger,” and never would be able to.  If he had to be flogged, he wanted it to be by a gentleman.

“Never min’,” said Little Lizay.  “Maybe yer’ll git mo’ ter-morrer.  When yer’s pickin’ yer mus’ quit stoppin’ ter pick out the leaves an’ trash.  I lets ev’rything go in that happens, green bolls an’ all:  they weighs heavy.”

The following day, Alston, as before, went to the cotton-field early, but he found that Little Lizay had the start of him.  She had already emptied her sack into her pick-basket.  “The cotton we get now’ll weigh heavy,” she said:  “it’s got dew on it.”

“That’s so,” Alston assented, “but yer mus’n’t talk ter me, Lizay.  I’s got ter put all my min’ ter my wuck:  I can’t foad ter talk.”

“I can’t nuther,” said Lizay.  “Wish I didn’t pick so much cotton the fus’ day:  I’s got ter keep on trottin’ ter two hunderd an’ fawty-seven.”

She selected two rows beside Alston’s.  She wore a coarse dress of uncolored homespun cotton, of the plainest and scantiest make, low in the neck, short in the sleeves and skirt.  Her feet and head were bare.  A sack of like material with her dress was tied about the waist, apron-like.  This was to receive immediately the pickings from the hand.  When filled it was emptied in a pick-basket, holding with a little packing fifty or sixty pounds.  This small basket was kept in the picker’s vicinity, being moved forward whenever the sack was taken back for emptying.  Besides this go-between pick-basket, there was at that end of the row nearest the ginhouse an immense basket, nearly as tall as a barrel, and of greater circumference, with a capacity for three hundred pounds.

Alston’s pick-basket stood beside Little Lizay’s, and between his row and hers.  She was carrying two rows to his one, and he perceived, without looking and with a vague envy, that Lizay emptied three sacks at least to his one.  Yet she did not seem to be working half as hard as he was.  With light, graceful movements, now right, now left, she plucked the white tufts and the candelabra-like pendants stretched by the wind and the expanding lint till the dark seed could be discerned in clusters.

It was near nine o’clock when Alston emptied his first sack, some fifteen pounds, in the pick-basket, which Little Lizay had brought forward with her own.  Soon after she went back to empty her sack.  The baskets stood hazardously near Alston for Lizay’s game, but with her back turned to him and the luxuriant cotton-stalks between she reckoned she might venture.  One-third of her sack she threw into Alston’s basket—­about five pounds.  And thus the poor soul did during the day, giving a third of her gatherings to Alston.  She would have given him more—­the half, the whole, everything she owned—­for she regarded him with a feeling that would have been called love in a fairer woman.