"If I ain't got to work in the field--"

"Don't work."

"Can't help it."

The call was repeated, and Nicholas sped over the mossy log and across
the ploughed field, while Bernard and Eugenia toiled up the hillside.

As they passed the Sweet Gum Spring they saw Delphy, the washerwoman,
standing in her doorway, quarrelling with her son-in-law, Moses, who was
hoeing a small garden patch in the rear of an adjoining cabin. Delphy
was a large mulatto woman, with a broad, flat bosom and enormous hands
that looked as if they had been parboiled into a livid blue tint.

"'Tain' no use fer to hoe groun' dat ain' got no richness," she was
saying, shaking her huge head until the dipper hanging on the lintel of
the door rattled, "en'tain' no use preachin' ter a nigger dat ain' got
no gumption. Es de tree fall, so hit' gwine ter lay, en es a fool's done
been born, so he gwine ter die. 'Tain' no use a-tryin' fer to do over a
job dat de Lawd done slighted. You may ding about hit en you may dung
about hit, but ef'n it won't, hit won't."

Moses, a meek-looking negro with an honest face, hoed silently, making
no response to his mother-in-law's vituperations, which grew voluble
before his non-resistance.

"Dar ain' no use er my frettin' en perfumin' over dat ar nigger," she
concluded, as if addressing a third person. "He wuz born a syndicate en