For all the business of late summer harvest, Sarah usually found time to drive into Highboro for church on Sunday. She was not deeply religious, her mind being more on this world than the next. She neither accepted nor rejected with zeal; she accepted quietly, doubted courteously and privately, and speculated in a moderation. But she liked to see people and to hear news, so she went to church. News was crops—cotton, corn, cane—and it was people—who died, who married, who gave birth, who came to live or visit. Church service also provided opportunity to talk to Edna. During the busiest weeks of harvesting and preserving, they heard of each other through the grapevine of their servants but had no time for casual visiting, and so depended on Sundays.

On the first Sunday of September she drove her own buggy into Highboro, her passengers, Rachel and Juanita. Rachel was too young for church, but she liked change and movement, so Sarah had begun to take her and her nurse with her for company when Leon did not go, leaving them in the buggy or at Nell’s to pass the time she spent in church. Leon was not a regular worshiper, and this Sunday he and Felix had ridden over to the other side of the county to look at a stand of timber they were thinking of buying together. The production of lumber and selling it on the foreign market were matters of growing interest to them, especially in years as lean as this one promised to be.

Sarah left Rachel and Juanita sharing a basket of peaches and chattering together in the grove where other rigs and wagons waited for owners who were presently engaged in giving God his weekly nod. Sarah saw Edna on the church porch for only a few minutes before they were surrounded and separated by other women of their acquaintance. Edna called to her friend, “Rooster wants particularly to speak to you—remember!”

After the singing and sermon, they met again on the porch and walked with Rooster to their buggies in the grove.

“When do you and Roman start your school again?” Rooster wanted to know.

“As soon as the heaviest work is finished. Soon now,” Sarah said. “I’ve missed it.”

“When I go to Savannah with my cotton, I’m going to bring back a tutor for my boys,” Rooster said.

“Like him and Bonard had,” Edna supplied. “And we’re wondering if you’ll take the girls at your school when you start teaching.”

“Oh, of course I will!” Sarah said. “I wish I’d thought of it. Rachel is too young, but she sits with us anyway, and Doreen and Annabel will certainly be welcome. Will you promise to send them every day?”

“We surely will!”

“It’s so important that they come regularly,” Sarah said.

“It’s most kind of you, Sarah,” Rooster said warmly.