The novelty of it was delightful. Yet in his heart Dad felt the novelty was by no means all.
As she worked, the little lady’s tongue went as nimbly as her fingers.
“Isn’t this what Ehud used to call rank good luck?” she was saying. “This afternoon of all afternoons, too. Why, three days out of four I’m as busy as tunket all afternoon. And here, just to-day, I said to myself: ‘I guess I’ll sit on the stoop a spell and play lady, and do some knitting.’ And I hadn’t been there three minutes, hardly, when past you came prancing.
“There’s another piece of luck, too. Only this noon I let all three of the house servants run over to the Winstons’ plantation to a wedding in the servants’ quarters over there. And I sent Tom—he’s my gardener, the only man slave I’ve got left here—over to see they didn’t stay too late. Any other day they’d be screeching like a pack of wildcats at sight of a Yankee.”
“But, madam,” expostulated Dad, finding his voice at last, “surely you run a risk, harboring a fugitive Union soldier. It was selfish in me not to—”
“Risks?” She caught him up gayly. “Sakes! I run risks every day of my blessed life these times. When the Confederates aren’t stealing my chickens the Yankees are stealing my pigs. Or both of them in turns are stealing my cows. It’s a mercy my teeth are my own, or those would have gone, too, long ago.”
“Still, there must surely be a risk in hiding me here. You said those men would come back. And if they do—”
“If they do,” she finished, “I’ll have to ask the recording angel to blot out some of the fibs I’ll tell them. Risk? There’s no risk. They aren’t likely to search the house. Not upstairs, anyhow. The servants won’t know anything, and I don’t believe anyone will search the magnolia thicket to see if there’s a horse tethered there.
“Just you rest easy. There’s no risk—either for you or for me.”
“I can’t thank you,” he faltered. “I haven’t words to. But I think you know how grateful I am.”