Harriett was fussing with Mingo. “You shouldn’t ’ve kept me out like that,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me what time it was? . . . I didn’t know.”

And Mingo came back: “Hey, didn’t I try to drag you away at midnight and you wouldn’t come? And ain’t I called you at one o’clock and you said: ‘Wait a minute’—dancin’ with some yaller P. I. from St. Joe, with your arms round his neck like a life-preserver? . . . Don’t tell me I didn’t want to leave, and me got to go to work at eight o’clock this mornin’ with a pick and shovel when the whistle blows! What de hell?”

But Harriett did not care to quarrel now when there would be no time to finish it properly. She was out of breath from hurrying and almost in tears. She was afraid to go home.

“Mingo, I’m scared.”

“Well, you know what you can do if your ma puts you out,” her escort said quickly, forgetting his anger. “I can take care of you. We could get married.”

“Could we, Mingo?”

“Sure!”

She slipped her hand in his. “Aw, daddy!” and the pace became much less hurried.

When they reached the corner near which Harriett lived, she lifted her dark little purple-powdered face for a not very lingering kiss and sent Mingo on his way. Then she frowned anxiously and ran on. The sky was a pale pearly color, waiting for the warm gold of the rising sun.

“I’m scared to death!” said Harriett. “Lord, Sandy, I hope ma ain’t up! I hope she didn’t come home last night from Mis’ Lane’s. We shouldn’t ’ve gone, Sandy . . . I guess we shouldn’t ’ve gone.” She was breathing hard and Sandy had to run fast to keep up with her. “Gee, I’m scared!”

The grass was diamond-like with dew, and the red bricks of the sidewalk were damp, as the small boy and his young aunt hurried under the leafy elms along the walk. They passed Madam de Carter’s house and cut through the wet grass into their own yard as the first rays of the morning sun sifted through the trees. Quietly they tiptoed towards the porch; quickly and quietly they crossed it; and softly, ever so softly, they opened the parlor door.

In the early dusk the oil-lamp still burned on the front-room table, and in an old arm-chair, with the open Bible on her lap, sat Aunt Hager Williams, a bundle of switches on the floor at her feet.

IX. CARNIVAL

Between the tent of Christ and the tents of sin there stretched scarcely a half-mile. Rivalry reigned: the revival and the carnival held sway in Stanton at the same time. Both were at the south edge of town, and both were loud and musical in their activities. In a dirty white tent in the Hickory Woods the Reverend Duke Braswell conducted the services of the Lord for the annual summer tent-meeting of the First Ethiopian Baptist Church. And in Jed Galoway’s meadow lots Swank’s Combined Shows, the World’s Greatest Midway Carnival, had spread canvas for seven days of bunko games and cheap attractions. The old Negroes went to the revival, and the young Negroes went to the carnival, and after sundown these August evenings the mournings songs of the Christians could be heard rising from the Hickory Woods while the profound syncopation of the minstrel band blared from Galoway’s Lots, strangely intermingling their notes of praise and joy.