She bent wondering over the pale plants. The poetry of the thing began to sing within her, awakening her unpoetic imagination, and she murmured:
‚ÄúThe Golden Fleece‚ÅÝ‚Äîit‚Äôs the Silver Fleece!‚Äù
He harkened.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Have you never heard of the Golden Fleece, Bles?”
“No, ma’am,” he said eagerly; then glancing up toward the Cresswell fields, he saw two white men watching them. He grasped his hoe and started briskly to work.
“Some time you’ll tell me, please, won’t you?”
She glanced at her watch in surprise and arose hastily.
‚ÄúYes, with pleasure,‚Äù she said moving away‚ÅÝ‚Äîat first very fast, and then more and more slowly up the lane, with a puzzled look on her face.
She began to realize that in this pleasant little chat the fact of the boy’s color had quite escaped her; and what especially puzzled her was that this had not happened before. She had been here four months, and yet every moment up to now she seemed to have been vividly, almost painfully conscious, that she was a white woman talking to black folk.
Now, for one little half-hour she had been a woman talking to a boy‚ÅÝ‚Äîno, not even that: she had been talking‚ÅÝ‚Äîjust talking; there were no persons in the conversation, just things‚ÅÝ‚Äîone thing: Cotton.
She started thinking of cotton‚ÅÝ‚Äîbut at once she pulled herself back to the other aspect. Always before she had been veiled from these folk: