One day, having completed her circle of flower dolls before her companion's was done, she leaned back against the apple tree beneath which the two were seated and thoughtfully regarded the other's down-bent brown face and "wrapped" hair. "Mary Magazine, you couldn't have been named 'Mary Magazine.' You were named Mary Magdalene."
"No'm," said Mary Magazine, a pink morning-glory in one hand and a blue one in the other. "No'm. I'm named Mary Magazine. My mammy done named me for de lady what took her cologne bottle somebody give her Christmas, an' poured it on her han' an' rubbed Jesus' feet."
When Mary Magazine didn't come to Gilead Balm and no children were staying in the house, and the overseer's grandchildren were at their home on the other side of the county, Hagar might--provided always she let some one know where she was going--Hagar might play alone on the ridge. To-day, having asked the Colonel if she might, she was playing there alone.
"Playing" was the accepted word. They always talked of her as "playing," and she herself repeated the word.
"I reckon so, Gipsy. Wear your sunbonnet and don't get into any mischief."
At the overseer's house she stopped to talk with Mrs. Green, picking pease in the garden. "Mahnin', Hagar," said Mrs. Green. "How's yo' ma this mahnin'?"
"I think she's better, Mrs. Green. She laughed a little this morning. Grandmother let me stay a whole half-hour, and mother talked about _her_ grandmother, and about picking up shells on the beach, and about a little boat that she used to go out to sea in. She said that all last night she felt that boat beneath her. She laughed and said it felt like going home.--Only"--Hagar looked at Mrs. Green with large, wistful eyes--"only home's really Gilead Balm."
"Of course it is," said Mrs. Green cheerfully. She sat down on an overturned bucket between the green rows of pease, and pushed back her sunbonnet from her kind, old wrinkled face. "I remember when yo' ma came here jest as well. She was jest the loveliest thing!--But of course all her own people were a good long way off, and she was a seafarer herself, and she couldn't somehow get used to the hills. I've heard her say they jest shut her in like a prison.... But then, after a while, you came, an' I reckon, though she says things sometimes, wherever you are she feels to be home. When it comes to being a woman, the good Lord has to get in com-pensation somewhere, or I don't reckon none of us could stand it.--I'm glad she's better."