Uncle Billy and Aunt Susan had come over to gossip a while. Mammy groped
her way into the house to drag out the wooden rocker for her
sister-in-law, while Uncle Billy tilted himself back against the cabin
in a straight splint-bottomed chair. The usual opening remarks about the
state of the family health, the weather, and the crops were of very
little interest to John Jay; indeed he nearly fell asleep while Aunt
Susan was giving a detailed account of the way she cured the misery in
her side. However, as soon as they began to discuss neighborhood
happenings, he was all attention.

The more interested he grew, it seemed to him, the lower they pitched
their voices. Creeping carefully across the floor, he curled up on his
pillow just inside the doorway, where the shadows fell heaviest, and
where he could enjoy every word of the conversation, without straining
his ears to listen.

"Gawge Chadwick came home yestiddy," announced Uncle Billy.

"Sho now!" exclaimed Mammy. "Not lame Jintsey's boy! You don't mean it!"

"That's the ve'y one," persisted Uncle Billy. "Gawge Washington
Chadwick. He's a ministah of the gospel now, home from college with a
Rev'und befo' his name, an' a long-tailed black coat on. He doesn't look
much like the little pickaninny that b'long to Mars' Nat back in wah
times."

"And Jintsey's dead, poah thing!" exclaimed Aunt Susan. "What a day it
would have been for her, if she could have lived to see her boy in the
pulpit!"