She smiled, and her hand reached deep under the bed covering, then under his nightshirt, and moved along his leg to his crotch. When she found his old dick and held it, it livened up. Taking one of her breasts, he got a gentle grip on its nipple with his teeth and tickled it caressingly with his tongue. She held his dick more firmly as it hardened.

The sound of music began downstairs.

2

For Floyd there was no separation of work and non-work; all he did was his life. After he had supper with Lovey and Roman and Clarice in the servants’ dining room off the kitchen of the main house, the room that had for a time been Roman’s own room, he went out to make the round of the barns, not to check on anybody’s work, for that was seldom necessary now, but simply because he liked looking at the animals in their stalls and pens knighting down. He slapped a flank here, a rump there as he walked through the cow barn.

Lovey went to her old cabin which she shared with Clarice and Ricey, to freshen herself and to put on a black dress with white collar and cuffs before returning to the big house to direct the servants’ work during the hours of the ball. As they shared living quarters, Lovey and Clarice also shared the supervision of work in the big house, it being understand that Lovey was the real mistress, after the mistress, and that Clarice was second to her in both the big house and the little cabin. Lovey was a stern woman but not a jealous one. She had welcomed Clarice to the plantation and to a share in her authority, and she spoke her praise generously. There was not one female worker in house or field who did not understand that the two women stood together even as they lived together. There was no getting to or around one of them by way of the other.

Ricey, who had been reluctant to leave Savannah and come to Beulah Land, lived with her mother and Lovey in a state of near hysteria, swearing that she would run away or kill herself unless she were criticized, supervised, and advised less severely. Clarice told her that she might not be happy but that she would, by God, be good. Lovey wished the girl would marry and remove herself from the cabin. She was tired of the young and their problems, most of which had to do with self-concern. So far, however, Ricey, had been too lofty to settle on any of the plantation men who fancied her, and her mother feared that she would stay an old maid.