[Illustration: Cissy and Tommy at the Center]
"Mine was the purtiest little gal with shiny hair. But it wasn't
colored," she added, regretfully. "Tommie's was a yaller
automobile."
"Why'd you have pictures?" asked Jimmie.
"I were going on eleven, but I couldn't read," Cissy confessed.
Rose-Ellen patted Jimmie stealthily and didn't tell Cissy that he
was going on ten and couldn't read either.
Cissy went on with her tale of the Center. There was toothbrush
and wash-up drill. There were clean play-suits that churches had
sent from far cities. Every morning there was worship. The
children had helped make an altar--a box with a silk scarf across
and a picture of Jesus above and a Bible and two candles. They
all sang hymns and heard Bible stories and prayed. Oh, yes,
Cissy said, back in the mountains they went to meetin'--when
there was meetin'--but God wasn't the same in Kentucky, some way.
The teachers' God loved them so good that it hurt him to have
them steal or lie or be any way dirty or mean. He had to love
them a heap to send the Center people to help them the way he
did.
After worship came play and study, outdoors and in, with the
clean babies comfortably asleep in the clothesbaskets, their
stomachs full of milk from shiny bottles. The older ones sat down
to the table and prayed, and drank milk through stems, and ate
carrots and greens and "samwidges.
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