"Come, is you? I 'lowed victuals would fetch you," grumbled the hag.
But Zora deigned no answer. She walked placidly to the table, where she took up a handful of cold corn-bread and meat, and then went over and curled up by the fire.
Elspeth and the girl talked and laughed coarsely, and the night wore on.
By and by loud laughter and tramping came from the road--a sound of numerous footsteps. Zora listened, leapt to her feet and started to the door. The old crone threw an epithet after her; but she flashed through the lighted doorway and was gone, followed by the oath and shouts from the approaching men. In the hut night fled with wild song and revel, and day dawned again. Out from some fastness of the wood crept Zora. She stopped and bathed in a pool, and combed her close-clung hair, then entered silently to breakfast.
Thus began in the dark swamp that primal battle with the Word. She hated it and despised it, but her pride was in arms and her one great life friendship in the balance. She fought her way with a dogged persistence that brought word after word of praise and interest from Bles. Then, once well begun, her busy, eager mind flew with a rapidity that startled; the stories especially she devoured--tales of strange things and countries and men gripped her imagination and clung to her memory.
"Didn't I tell you there was lots to learn?" he asked once.
"I knew it all," she retorted; "every bit. I'se thought it all before; only the little things is different--and I like the little, strange things."
Spring ripened to summer. She was reading well and writing some.
"Zora," he announced one morning under their forest oak, "you must go to school."
She eyed him, surprised.
"Why?"
"You've found some things worth knowing in this world, haven't you, Zora?"
"Yes," she admitted.
"But there are more--many, many more--worlds on worlds of things--you have not dreamed of."
She stared at him, open-eyed, and a wonder crept upon her face battling with the old assurance. Then she looked down at her bare brown feet and torn gown.
"I've got a little money, Zora," he said quickly.
But she lifted her head.
"I'll earn mine," she said.
"How?" he asked doubtfully.
"I'll pick cotton."
"Can you?"
"Course I can."
"It's hard work."
She hesitated.
"I don't like to work," she mused. "You see, mammy's pappy was a king's son, and kings don't work. I don't work; mostly I dreams. But I can work, and I will--for the wonder things--and for you."
So the summer yellowed and silvered into fall. All the vacation days Bles worked on the farm, and Zora read and dreamed and studied in the wood, until the land lay white with harvest. Then, without warning, she appeared in the cotton-field beside Bles, and picked.