"This is the way we brush our teeth," sang the girl and while her
toe tapped the time, two brushes popped into two mouths and
scrubbed up and down, up and down--"brush our teeth, brush our
teeth!"

She spied Rose-Ellen. "Did you-uns larn at the Center, too?" she
asked eagerly. "First off, we-uns allowed they was queer little
hair-brushes; but them teachers! Them teachers could make 'em
fly fast as a sewing machine. We reckoned if them teachers was
so smart with such comical contraptions, like enough they knowed
other queer doings. And they sure did."

Thus began the friendship between the Beecham children and Cissy,
Tom and Mary--with toddling Georgie and the baby thrown in.
Cissy was beautiful, like Grandma's old cameo done in color, with
heavy, loose curls of gold-brown hair. Long evening, visits she
and Rose-Ellen had, when they were not too tired from cotton-picking.
Little by little Rose-Ellen learned the story of Cissy's past few
years. Always she would remember it, spiced with the queer words
Cissy used.

They had lived on a branch--a brook--in the Kentucky hills.
Their house was log, said Cissy, with a fireplace where Maw had
her kettles and where the whole lot of them could sit when winter
nights were cold, and Paw could whittle and Maw weave a coverlet.

"Nary one of us could read," Cissy said dreamily, sitting on the
packing-box doorstep with elbows on knees and chin on palms.
"But Paw could tell purty tales and Maw could sing song-ballads