Mrs. Birnie glanced again at the huddle of pink
in the nest of quilts behind a beloved chest of drawers in
the wagon, and sighed with relief because Buddy slept.
An ambitious man-child already was Buddy, accustomed to
certain phrases that, since he could toddle, had formed
inevitable accompaniment to his investigative footsteps.
"L'k-out-dah!" he had for a long time believed to be his
name among the black folk of his world. White folk had varied
it slightly. He knew that "Run-to-mother-now" meant that
something he would delight in but must not watch was going to
take place. Spankings more or less official and not often
painful signified that big folks did not understand him and
his activities, or were cross about something. Now, mother
did not want him to watch the wild cow run and jump at the
end of a rope until finally forced to submit to the ox-yoke
and help pull the wagon. Buddy loved to watch them, but he
understood that mother was afraid the wild cow might step on
him. Why she should want him to sleep when he was not sleepy
he had not yet discovered, and so disdained to give it
serious consideration.
"Not s'eepy," Buddy stated again emphatically as a sort of
mental dismissal of the command, and crawled carefully past
Sister and lifted a flap of the canvas cover.
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