Without putting on her shoes Portia stood at the table and
carefully began to pick over the greens. This here floor sure do feel good to my feets. You mind if I just walk around like this without putting ba them tight, hurting pumps?』
No, said Doctor Copeland. That will be all right』
Then—usll have these nice collards and some hoecake and coffee. And I, going to cut me off a few slices of this here white meat and fry it for myself.』
Doctor Copeland followed Portia with his eyes. She moved slowly around the room ioged feet, taking down the scrubbed pans from the wall, building up the fire, washing the grit from the collards. He opened his mouth to speak ond then posed his lips again.
So you and your husband and your brother have your own co-operative plan, he said finally.
"Thats right.』
Doctor Copeland jerked at his fingers and tried to popTHE HEAR! IS A LUWHL I rtuiN mis. i？
the joints again. Do you io plan for children?』
Portia did not look at her father. Angrily she sloshed the water from the pan of collards. "There be some things, she said, that seem to me to depeirely upon God.』
They did not say anything else. Portia left the supper to cook oove and sat silently with her long hands dropping down limp between her knees. Doctor Cope-lands head rested on his chest as though he slept. But he was not sleeping; now and then a nervous tremor would pass over his face. Then he would breathe deeply and pose his face again. Smells of the supper began to fill the stifling room. In the quiethe clo top of the cupboard sounded very loud, and because of what they had just said to each other the monotonous tig was like the word chil-dren, chil-dren, said over and over.
He was always meeting one of them—crawling naked on a floaged in a game of marbles or even on a dark street with his arms around a girl. Be Copeland, the boys were all called. But for the girls there were suames as Benny Mae or Madyben or Benedine Ma-dine. He had ted one day, and there were more than a dozen named for him.
But all his life he had told and explained and exhorted. You ot do this, he would say. There are all reasons why this sixth or fifth or ninth child ot be, he would tell them. It is
not more children we need but more ces for the ones already on the earth. Eugenic Parenthood for the Negro Race was what he would exhort them to. He would tell them in simple words, always the same way, and with the years it came to be a sort of angry poem which he had always known by heart.
He studied and khe development of aheory. And from his own pocket he would distribute the devices to his patients himself. He was by far the first doctor iown to even think of such. And he would give and explain and give ahem. And then deliver maybe two score times a week. Madyben and Benny Mae.
That was only one point. Only one.
All of his life he khat there was a reason for his w.
He always khat he was meant to teach his people. All day he would go with his bag from house to house and on all things he would talk to them. MCUULLEKSAfter the long day a heavy tiredness would e in him. But in the evening when he opehe front gate the tiredness would go away. There were Hamilton and Karl Marx and Portia and little William. There was Daisy, too.
Portia took the lid from the pan oove and stirred the collards with a fork. Father— she said after a while.
Doctor Copeland cleared his throat an