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"Thomas was at your house He says it looks like you have extra rooms I’ve studied it out Bitsy could learn to help you with the deliveries and on the farhter is thrifty and smart She’d be company for you out there in the sticks You’d like her"

I can’t believe this conversation is happening Sometimes it would be nice to have another person around Mrs Kelly and I lived quite coether in our little white house before she had her heart attack, but Bitsy and I together, a black and a white? I don’t really care what people think, but I can’t afford to bring attention to myself I’ve just met Bitsy, and I’ve never knohite woman to live with a colored before, unless she was a servant

"She has one week to move out of here"

"You know, Mary, I don’t have electricity or gas or a telephone or a car It would be a tougher life than Bitsy is used to Has she ever lived in the country?"

"Sure We stayed with my pa near Fancy Gap in the irl That was before we inia so my husband could work in the mines Mr Proudfoot, Bitsy’s pa, was killed in the Switchback Mine explosion along with sixty other men By that time my daddy had passed on and lost his farm, and there was no place for us in Fancy Gap The children and I moved north with the MacIntosh family when they opened their new mines in Union County" She says all this without a trace of self-pity

"Bitsy kno to kill and dress deer She can fish She could clean and do laundry for you so that you’d have h school in Del books, and she’s as hard as cowhide if she needs to be" The cook is as relentless as a Fuller brush salesrab my satchel and , I slow and give the prospect soift or could e I picture the two of us curled at the opposite ends of the sofa, reading in the evenings, as Mrs Kelly and I once did Would Bitsy squir under her breath? Does she snore or click her teeth when she eats? Would I have enough food? Those are the little things that concernhow the community would feel about us I couldn’t call heron me It riles me even to think of it!

Crescent Moon

"Katherine? It’s Patience," I call softly from the upstairs hall "I came to check on you and the baby" The bedroom door is half open, and I see the woman pull her shift over her breast and stand up "I’ize "Mary says you’re both doing fine" I note that the baby is asleep in his cradle, nursing his little tongue

"Oh, Patience I’ve e of the bed, and by her action, I see that her bottos are not as hunky-dory as Mary implied

"Are you okay?"

Dried milk is caked on the woman’s lavender chemise, her hair is uncombed, and her pale face, without uess sono, not really I just feel so rotten about Bitsy"