Darry I should like to go and see some of the other houses
again. I know now, I can see, looking back, how my childish
self-control and reserve made some of those impulsive natures
around me regard me with something like worshipful reverence.
I felt it then, without thinking of it or reasoning about it.
From Darry, and from Margaret, and from Mammy Theresa, and
from several others, I had a loving, tender reverence, which
not only felt for me as a sorrowful child, but bowed before me
as something of higher and stronger nature than themselves.
Darry silently attended me now from house to house of the
quarters; introducing and explaining and doing all he could to
make my progress interesting and amusing. Interested I was;
but most certainly not amused. I did not like the look of
things any better than I had done at first. The places were
not "nice;" there was a coarse, uncared-for air of everything
within, although the outside was in such well dressed
condition. No litter on the grass, no, untidiness of walls or
chimneys; and no seeming of comfortable homes when the door
was opened. The village, for it amounted to that, was almost
deserted at that hour; only a few crooning old women on the
sunny side of a wall, and a few half-grown girls, and a
quantity of little children, depending for all the care they
got upon one or the other of these.

"Haven't all these little babies got mothers?" I asked.

"For sure, Miss Daisy — dey's got modders."

"Where _are_ the mothers of all these babies, Darry?" I asked.