Aunt Hager lifted her heavy body over fallen tree-trunks and across puddles, but between puffs she managed to voice her indignation, so Annjee said no more concerning letters from her husband. Instead they went back to the subject of the cyclone. “I’m just thankful, ma, it didn’t blow the whole house down and you with it, that’s all! I was certainly worried! . . . And then you-all was gone when I got home! Gone on out—nursing that white woman.... It’s too bad ’bout poor Mis’ Gavitt, though, and old man Gavitt, ain’t it?”

“Yes, indeedy!” said Aunt Hager. “It’s sho too bad. They was certainly good old white folks! An’ her married niece is takin’ it mighty hard, po’ little soul. I was nigh two hours, her husband an’ me, tryin’ to bring her out o’ de hysterics. Tremblin’ like a lamb all over, she was.” They were turning into the yard. “Be careful with that chile, Annjee, you don’t trip on none o’ them boards nor branches an’ fall with him.”

“Put me down, ’cause I’m awake,” said Sandy.

The old house looked queer without a porch. In the moonlight he could see the long nails that had held the porch roof to the weather-boarding. His grandmother climbed slowly over the door-sill, and his mother lifted him to the floor level as Aunt Hager lit the large oil-lamp on the parlor table. Then they went back to the bedroom, where the youngster took off his clothes, said his prayers, and climbed into the high feather bed where he slept with Annjee. Aunt Hager went to the next room, but for a long time she talked back and forth through the doorway to her daughter about the storm.

“We was just startin’ out fo’ Mis’ Carter’s cellar, me an’ Sandy,” she said several times. “But de Lawd was with us! He held us back! Praise His name! We ain’t harmed, none of us—’ceptin’ I don’t know ’bout ma Harriett at de club. But you’s all right. An’ you say Tempy’s all right, too. An’ I prays that Harriett ain’t been touched out there in de country where she’s workin’. Maybe de storm ain’t passed that way.”

Then they spoke about the white people where Annjee worked . . . and about the elder sister Tempy’s prosperity. Then Sandy heard his grandmother climb into bed, and a few minutes after the springs screaked under her, she had begun to snore. Annjee closed the door between their rooms and slowly began to unlace her wet shoes.

“Sandy,” she whispered, “we ain’t had no word yet from your father since he left. I know he goes away and stays away like this and don’t write, but I’m sure worried. Hope the cyclone ain’t passed nowhere near wherever he is, and I hope ain’t nothin’ hurt him. . . . I’m gonna pray for him, Sandy. I’m gonna ask God right now to take care o’ Jimboy. . . . The Lawd knows, I wants him to come back! . . . I loves him. . . . We both loves him, don’t we, child? And we want him to come on back!”