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
that would make you weep. But they wasn't no good huntin' no
more, and the kittles was empty. So we come down to the coal
mines, and when the mines shut down, we went on into the onions."
These were great marshes, drained like cranberry bogs and planted
in onions. Whole families could work there, planting, weeding,
pulling, packing.
("I've learned a lot!" thought Rose-Ellen.
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