Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South Part 10

"Oh, now we can have a lot of fun!" cried Bunny, when he saw these playmates. "Will you show me how to pick cotton?" he asked Sam.

"Sure," was the answer. "I help pick it myself, sometimes."

"And will you show me how to dig peanuts?" asked Sue of Grace.

"You don't have to do much digging," answered the little Southern girl, laughing. "You just pull up the vines and the peanuts stick to 'em, same as potatoes do. Course you sometimes have to dig out some that don't come up on the vine."

While Mr. and Mrs. Brown and Mr. and Mrs. Morton were talking together, the children were allowed to go to one of the near-by cotton fields.

Cotton, as you know, grows on low bushes, which are planted in long rows, so the pickers may easily walk between them. In some countries the cotton bushes, or plants, last from one year to the next, but in Georgia most of the cotton grows from new bushes each year. The seeds are planted in the spring, but the picking is not finished until sometimes late in what is the winter season of the North.

Of course in some parts of Georgia there are frosts which kill the bushes, and in these parts of the state the cotton must be picked earlier than in the southern part, where the Browns were.

So, though there was cold weather and snow in Bellemere, there were warm, blue skies in Georgia, and the colored men, women and children were out in the fields picking the cotton.

As Bunny Brown and his sister Sue, with Sam and Grace, reached the field of cotton, they could hear the darkies singing. Some one would start a tune, and then others would join in.

"It's jolly!" laughed Bunny, as they stopped to listen to a funny song about a mule.

"Yes, the darkies always seem to be happy," said Sam.

The children from the North watched as the colored pickers pulled off the great, fluffy b.a.l.l.s of white, stuffing them into bags or baskets which were later taken from the field on two-wheeled mule carts.

"What are all those brown things in the cotton?" asked Sue, as she looked at a fluffy clump on a near-by bush.

"Seeds," answered Grace. "The cotton clump, or boll, is full of seeds, and these have to be taken out before the cotton is baled up for the mill."

"Oh, I 'member about that!" cried Bunny. "We learned it in school. A man named Eli Whitney made a machine for taking seeds out of the cotton."

"That's right," admitted Sam. "I'll take you to the gin, as it is called, where the seeds are taken from the cotton and the white stuff is pressed into bales. You ought to see the big presses! It squeezes the cotton all up!"

"I hope it doesn't squeeze us!" laughed Sue.

"I'll keep you back out of danger," promised Grace.

The children walked through the cotton field of the plantation and were greeted by broad grins and smiles on the part of the colored folk. There seemed to be more children than grown people working in the field, and Sam said it was sometimes hard to get old pickers, so children had to be used.

The darkies did not work very fast, and often, as Bunny and his sister walked along with their new friends, the hands would stop working to look at the children. This, with their habit of stopping to sing every now and then, slowed up the cotton picking.

"I'd like to go to the mill and see the cotton pressed into bales," said Bunny after a while.

"All right, we'll go," said Sam. "You've seen about all there is to see here."

As they turned away Sue suddenly called:

"Hark!"

They all listened, and Grace said:

"That's one of their banjos! They bring them to the field and play and dance."

"Oh, let's see that!" cried Sue. "It'll be more fun than going to the cotton factory!"

Bunny, too, wanted to listen to the music, so they turned aside into a part of the field where most of the cotton had been picked from the bushes. The darkies, who had finished this part of their work, were celebrating after a fas.h.i.+on.

Some boards had been laid down, and an awning placed over them to make a place where bags of cotton were tied up to be taken to the gin. Gathered around this platform were a number of negro men, women and children. One of the men had an old banjo, and though the instrument seemed battered and broken, he managed to get some lively music from it.

"Golly, dat suah mek me want to shuffle mah feet!" exclaimed one bright-eyed colored lad.

"Why doan you shuffle 'em den, Rastus?" some one called. "Show de white folks how you kin cut de pigeon wing!"

"Oh, landy, banjo music suah am sweet!" cried an old white-wooled colored woman, with a jolly laugh.

Then the man with the banjo "cut loose," as one of his friends called it, and played such a lively tune that even Bunny and Sue said they felt like dancing. But they wanted to see what the cotton pickers did, and so they watched. Out on the wooden platform shuffled Rastus, and the way he kicked up, turned cartwheels, stood on his hands and danced around made Bunny and Sue laugh in delight.

Others of the pickers, men and women, girls and boys, danced, and then along came the driver of one of the mule carts who had a mouth organ. He added this music to that of the banjo, until quite a crowd had collected.

"My goodness!" exclaimed a voice behind Bunny and Sue when there came a lull in the fun. "Cotton picking can't be such very hard work after all!" The children turned around to see their mother and Mrs. Morton, who had come to the field.

"Oh, the darkies have to have their fun, and if we didn't let them we wouldn't get as much work done as now takes place," said the wife of the cotton planter. "Life is rather slow and easy down here."

Indeed it seemed so. After more banjo and mouth organ music, the pickers gradually went to another part of the field, and Bunny and Sue, with the two Morton children, were allowed to go to the place where the loose cotton was pressed into big bales.

Cotton, as you have doubtless noticed, is very light and fluffy. A pound of it, loose, takes up much room, and it is to save room that it is pressed into bales, or bundles. Each one weighs about five hundred pounds, and the bales are somewhat larger than a barrel, though of square shape and not round. But if the cotton were allowed to fluff out, it would take up four or five times this room.

Guided by Sam and Grace, Bunny and his sister were taken to the cotton gin and baling place. First the seeds must be taken out of the cotton.

To do this the fluffy ma.s.s, as it is taken from the bags or baskets in which it is carted from the field, is fed into a machine.

The machine is like a big clothes wringer, but the rolls, instead of being made of smooth rubber, are rough, and covered with sharp iron teeth.

As the cotton pa.s.ses between these toothed rollers they tear it apart, loosening the seeds, which drop down while the cleaned cotton goes to the other side of the machine ready to be baled.

The cotton seeds are used for many things, being sometimes fed to cattle in the form of meal, or from them oil may be squeezed which is almost as good to eat as olive oil.

"I want to see the cotton pushed into bales," said Bunny, and his Southern friends led the way into the factory. There were white wisps of cotton all about, clinging to the walls and ceiling of the pressing room, as well as to the colored men who were working there. Bunny and Sue did not understand much about the machinery. But they could see how the cotton was put into a sort of iron box. A big plunger then pressed down what might be called the "lid" of the box. This squeezed the big, fluffy ma.s.s of cotton into a bale, and iron straps, or wires, were put around the outside of the burlap bagging that kept the cotton clean.

Sue was standing with Sam and Grace, watching the cotton being pressed into bales, when suddenly behind them came a noise as of something falling, and a voice cried:

"Oh, dear!"

"That's Bunny!" exclaimed Sue, turning around.

She did not see her brother, but she saw some men gathered around a big heap of cotton on the floor of the gin. And, not seeing Bunny, his sister Sue had the most dreadful scare.

"Oh, Bunny's in a cotton press! He's being put into one of the bales!"

she cried. "Oh, Bunny! Bunny!" and she broke away from the holding hand of Grace and rushed toward the heap of cotton on the floor, which was tumbling about in the queerest fas.h.i.+on.