Sarah watched them now, Selma and Pauline, marching along side by side, keeping in military step, their eyes straight ahead and they seeming oblivious to other activity around them. There was Sallou scattering crumbled biscuits from a pie pan to the pea and guinea fowls, that alone of the fowl had free run of the yards.

And there was Roman walking between Otis and Lotus, holding a hand of each. His room being back of the kitchen and pantries, he saw Myrtis’s twins often, even when they were not in school. Their father had died the winter before. Though still a young man, he had cut his foot on rusty iron, and although Myrtis had tied it up with a kerosene-drenched rag holding a copper penny, he had got the blood poisoning anyway and died of it. Feeling sorry for the twins, and fond of them too, Roman gave them more of his time, a surrogate father.

Roman, during the last year, had suddenly, mysteriously grown quite handsome. Sarah had always said he was, but she was the only one who saw it before now. He was still hunchbacked, he still limped—of course. But the features of his face were becoming his own and clearly defined, with no pudginess or vague line or awkward angle. The tone of his voice had lowered and deepened without losing its musicality. His hands, the fingers still knuckly with adolescence but long and finely formed, were as eloquent in expression as his face, whether in motion or repose.

Sarah watched him as he lifted Lotus to sit on the bare old table that lived outdoors in all seasons and was used to support the washtubs on the one or two days of every week washing was done. Otis clambered up by himself to sit beside her. Sarah smiled as she saw Roman’s head go back in laughter at something Lotus must have said, for she had drawn her head down on her short neck and was obviously laughing too. Even as she saw in the clear molding of nose and lips and chin proof that he was Leon’s son, Sarah loved him. And she saw someone else who did not.

Roscoe Elk came up from the barns walking in a hurry. But he stopped when he saw Roman and the children; after staring at them briefly, he came on toward the house.

Sarah left the window and went into the hall and breezeway a moment after she heard Leon pass along them. She had got to the breezeway and paused to look out as Leon emerged from the back door and found Roscoe waiting for him.

“I just heard about Mister Clarence Anderson,” he said in a sober voice.

“I too,” Leon said. “I’m going over there and to town.”