"She gave me some, and I saved a piece for you." After much searching through his pockets, John Jay handed out a big chocolate cream that had been mashed flat.

Bud ate it gratefully as they walked on, and wiped his lips with his little red tongue, longing for more.
After supper, as Mammy and John Jay went down the narrow meadow path in Indian file, he ventured a question that he had pondered all day.
"Mammy, does we all have buthdays same as white folks ?" "Of co'se," answered the old woman, tramping on ahead with her skirts held high out of the dewy grass.
"When's yoah's ?" he asked, after a pause.
"Well," she began reflectively, not willing to acknowledge that she had never known the exact date, "I'm nevah ve'y p'tick'lah 'bout its obsa'vation.

It's on a Monday, long in early garden-makin' time." They had come to a little brook, bridged by a wide, hewed log.

When they had crossed in careful silence, John Jay began again.

"Mammy, when's my buthday ?" "I kaint tell 'zactly, honey," she answered, "'twel I adds it up." As she began counting on her fingers, her skirts slipped lower and lower from her grasp, until they brushed the dew of the wayside weeds.
"Yes, that's it," she announced at last.