"Are you going back there?" Rose-Ellen asked.

Cissy nodded, her hands folded tight between her knees. "And
maybe stay all winter, and me and Tommie go to school. Because
Paw and Maw feel like the teachers was kinfolk, since what
happened to Georgie."

"What happened to Georgie?"

Six children huddled on the doorstep now, shivering in the chilly
dark. "One Sunday night," Cissy said, "Georgie took to yelling,
and went all stiff and purple, and we couldn't make out what
ailed him. Only that his throat hurt too bad to swallow; so Maw
tied up his topknot so tight it near pulled it out: that was to
lift his palate, because dropped palates make sore throats.

"Georgie didn't get any better. When the teachers come Monday
morning to tote us to the Center, they begged to take Georgie to
the doctor. Maw was might' nigh crazy by then, and she got into
the Ford without her head combed, Georgie in her lap. Maw said
she never had ridden so fast. She thought her last-day was come,
with the fences streaking past her lickety-split. And when they
come to the doctor he looked Georgie over and said, 'Could this
child have got hold of any lye?' And Maw said, real scairt,
well, she did have a bottle of lye water, and somebody might have
set it on the floor.

"So every day the rest of the summer them teachers toted Georgie
to the Center and the doctor cured Georgie up till now he can eat
purty good. So that's how come we're shore going back to the