Coming up the path under the bottle trees was a white lady. At first she looked young, but then she looked old. Marvelous to see, a little car stood steaming like a kettle out in the field-track—it had come without a road.

Livvie stood listening to the long, repeated knockings at the door, and after a while she opened it just a little. The lady came in through the crack, though she was more than middle-sized and wore a big hat.

“My name is Miss Baby Marie,” she said.

Livvie gazed respectfully at the lady and at the little suitcase she was holding close to her by the handle until the proper moment. The lady’s eyes were running over the room, from palmetto to palmetto, but she was saying, “I live at home . . . out from Natchez . . . and get out and show these pretty cosmetic things to the white people and the colored people both . . . all around . . . years and years. . . . Both shades of powder and rouge. . . . It’s the kind of work a girl can do and not go clear ’way from home . . .” And the harder she looked, the more she talked. Suddenly she turned up her nose and said, “It is not Christian or sanitary to put feathers in a vase,” and then she took a gold key out of the front of her dress and began unlocking the locks on her suitcase. Her face drew the light, the way it was covered with intense white and red, with a little patty-cake of white between the wrinkles by her upper lip. Little red tassels of hair bobbed under the rusty wires of her picture-hat, as with an air of triumph and secrecy she now drew open her little suitcase and brought out bottle after bottle and jar after jar, which she put down on the table, the mantel-piece, the settee, and the organ.

“Did you ever see so many cosmetics in your life?” cried Miss Baby Marie.

“No’m,” Livvie tried to say, but the cat had her tongue.

“Have you ever applied cosmetics?” asked Miss Baby Marie next.

“No’m,” Livvie tried to say.

“Then look!” she said, and pulling out the last thing of all, “Try this!” she said. And in her hand was unclenched a golden lipstick which popped open like magic. A fragrance came out of it like incense, and Livvie cried out suddenly, “Chinaberry flowers!”