The Yankee said nothing more, and they entered the house. A girl, who was reading near a window, rose to receive them, looking surprised as she saw the stranger.
"Cousin Madge," said Floyd, in a bantering tone, "let me introduce to you an errant knight who has wandered from the paternal castle even to the banks of the Wabash. His ancestral name is Spink."
"How can you, Will?" said Madge, laughing. "I am sure Mr. Spink is very welcome."
She was very beautiful—a strange flower to bloom in the wilderness. She was not the daughter of Matthew Floyd by blood, but the child of a dear friend, Herbert Carlysle, who had long ago gone down into the valley of the shadow, leaving her to his care. And when the hour of trial came to her adopted father, she followed him boldly, to make a new home and fortune upon the prairies of the far west. She was, as we introduce her, a young girl, with hair banded back from a lofty brow, and rolled in great braids upon her regal head; a face a little browned by exposure to the sun, but very beautiful. She came forward immediately and greeted the Yankee with cordial ease and grace, and he looked down on her with a broad smile.
"A strange place tew bring sech a gal as this, Capting Floyd," he said. "The towns would be the safest place fur her, now."
"She will not leave my father," said Floyd. "If we could have our way she would not be here. Madge, our friend is hungry. Will you go to Phillis and ask her to get him something to eat? She probably will not do it unless you speak coaxingly to her, for a more obstinate old woman never breathed."
"W'at?" exclaimed a voice. "Who you's talking 'bout, mass' Will? You t'ink cause you's white dat dis chile gwine ter lay down so dat you can tramp on her, but she ain't; no sah! I's a nigger, but Goramity he med me black hese own self, an' all de water in Egypt can't wash me white, nohow."
"Now Phillis—" said Will.
"Oh, hold you hush, do, mass' Will! You gwine 'bout to mek mischief, dat's w'at you's gwine to do! You s'pose I gwine to dirty all my dish for dis low-lived Yankee truck, gwine 'bout in de woods like a roarin' lion for to come for to go fur to eat ebbery t'ing? How we give him 'nough to eat, a great long shadder?"