“I get home early now—to see if he has got home. I done commanded F. D. to be in the house by midnight. Just so he won’t think I’m spying on him, I comes home about twelve-thirty or one. He’s laying on his side of the bed reading a book. I do not want to put the light out while he’s reading—also I am not sleepy so early—so I start talking to him. And we talks sometimes till two-three in the morning.”

“It must run in the family,” I said, “both of you are night-owls. What can you find to talk about with a youngster like F. D.?”

“Life,” said Simple.

“That covers a very wide range of subjects,” I said.

“F. D. ain’t no baby. When you are going on eighteen now, it is just like going on twenty-eight when I were a child. Besides, he were raised by Mattie Mae, and even though she’s my cousin, she never was known to be no lily.”

“You don’t need to tell everything you know about your Cousin Mattie Mae,” I said.

“I say that to say this,” said Simple, “Mattie were not bashful with nobody. So I know she did not raise F. D. on Sunday school cards alone. He knows the facts of life. You know what he asked me already? I were telling him about the reason I have started putting Five or Ten dollars in the leaves of the Bible every week is because I am preparing to pay for my divorce.

“F. D. says, ‘Then you were married legally, and not common law?’

“‘I regrets it, but I were,’ I said.

“F. D. said, ‘But, coz, I always heard common law is better since it doesn’t cost so much to get loose.’

“I did not think it would be good morals to agree with F. D., so I said, ‘Boy, where did you hear that?’

“‘From mama,’ said F. D.

“‘Mattie Mae said that?’ I acted like I was surprised.

“‘Yes, but mama didn’t really believe it herself, after she saw the results,’ said F. D., ‘because after my third brother and sister came, she told my step-father he had better marry her—or she would get out an injunction to keep him from rooming at our house. So they got married. Which was all right by me,’ says F. D., ‘except that he thought his fatherly duty was to tan my hide, which I never did like, not being his child. And you know I am too big to whip now. But look at these scars on my legs.’

“F. D. stretched one leg out from under the sheet and raised it up, then he pulled the other one out. Both of them were whelped up.

“‘Mama should not have let him whip me like this, should she? But she is crazy about that Negro.’