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He lives with Bachelor Billy." "Is is Bachelor Billy his father?" "Naw; he ain't got no father." "Does he work with you in the mines?" "In the mines? naw; we don't work in the mines; we work in the screen-room up t' the breaker, a-pickin' slate. He sets nex' to me." "How long has he been working there?" "Oh, I donno; couple o' years, I guess. You want to see 'im? I'll go call 'im."
At first cotton-picking was interesting, the fluffy bolls looking like artificial roses and the stray blossoms strangely shaped and delicately pink. Sometimes a group of Negro pickers would chant in rich voices as they picked. "Da cotton want a-pickin' so ba-ad!" But it was astonishing to the Beechams to find how many aches they had and how few pounds of cotton when the day's picking was weighed.
The Captain took an angry step into the pantry and gave a roar of command for Bunty to come down. The boy dropped in an agony of dread and shrinking. "Always his hands a-pickin' and stealin' and his tongue a-lyin'," said Martha Tomlinson, gazing unkindly at the unhappy child.
I can pick two hund'ed pounds a day an' I's one hund'ed an' sixteen year old. I picks wid both han's an' don't have to stoop much. My back don't never ache me atall. My mammy teached me to pick cotton. She took a pole to me if I didn' do it right. I been a-pickin ever since. I'd ruther pick cotton dan eat, any day. "But I'se seen enough.
And Sally was about the best of the bunch." "Why didn't you pick her then?" asked Tom. "She got in her hand pickin' first," chuckled Jerry. "And she picked a feller from town. Fac' is, I was so long a-pickin' that I never got nary wife at all, so have lived all my life an old bachelder."
"Why, ye see," meandered on the captain, "when I see them peanuts a-rollin' round, an' Sam in that takin', I says to myself, Sam ain't got no time to lose a-pickin' up of them peanuts, an' maybe he'd be glad to get rid of 'em for what he give for 'em an' no profits, an' let Jim have the profits, an' no freight to pay on 'em but me to get 'em picked up.
"If he's told me once, he's told me a 'undred times that he won't 'ave no blossoms broke off that bush on no account An' there he is a-pickin' of it hisself! That's a kind of thing which do make me feel that men is a poor feeble-minded lot, it do reely now!"
But if, on the strength of this, any one else ventured a reproof, Candace was immediately round on the other side: "Dat ar' chile gwin' to be spiled, 'cause dey's allers a-pickin' on him; he's well enough, on'y let him alone."
An' while she was a-pickin' of them out very careful indeed, and I'm always glad when them sort gets a few over-ripe ones there was two other ladies talkin' over the fence. An' one on 'em said to the other on 'em just like this "'I've told both gells to come, and they can doss in with M'ria and Jane, 'cause their boss and his missis is miles away and the kids too.
Huccome him to be bald? He's out in the fiel' one day a-pickin' cotton when he see a tu'key buzzard an' he talk to her like this: "'I say tu'key buzzard, I say, Who shall I see unexpected today?
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