“Come on, girls,” cried Nettie, showing more vigor than she usually displayed as she was helped into her saddle by one of the attendants. “I’m just aching for a ride.”
They rode, however, with side-saddle, and neither Ruth nor Helen felt as sure of themselves mounted in this way as they had in the West on the cow-ponies belonging to Mr. Bill Hicks.
The morning, however, was delightful. The dogs and little negroes cheered the cavalcade as they passed in sight of the cabins. Had Mr. Lomaine not ordered them back, a dozen or more of both pickaninnies and canines would have followed “de quality” around the plantation.
They rode down from the corn lands to the cotton fields. Negroes and mules were at work everywhere. “I do say!” gasped Helen. “I didn’t know there were so many mules in the whole world. Funny things! with their shaved tails and long ears.”
“And hind feet with the itch!” exclaimed Ruth. “I don’t want to get near the dangerous end of one of those creatures.”
The cavalcade followed the roads through the fields of cotton and down to the river bank. Here stood the long cotton warehouse and the gin-house and press, where the cotton is prepared, baled, and stored for the market. The Merredith cotton was shipped direct from the plantation’s own dock, and the buyers came here at the selling time to inspect and judge the quality of the output.
The warehouse boss, a long, lean, yellow man with a chin whisker that wabbled in a funny way every time he spoke, came out on the platform to speak with Mr. Lomaine. There were some hands inside trundling baled cotton from one end of the dark warehouse to the other.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Mr. Lomaine, within the girls’ hearing, and after a minute or two of desultory conversation with the boss. “Hullo! who’s that white boy you got there, Jimson?”
“That boy?” returned the man, with a broad grin. “That’s a little, starvin’ Yank that come along. I had to feed him; so I thought I’d bettah put him to work. And he kin work—sho’ kin!”
Ruth’s eye would never have been attracted by the slim figure wheeling the big cotton bale had she not overheard this speech. A boy from the North? And he had curly hair.