“No, indeed.” Captain Delfield’s voice was firm. “Remember, Roxy: not a signal. Promise.”
“All right, Father. I won’t signal,” Roxy promised, but she was greatly disappointed; she had told Jasmine that she would let her signal to Polly, and Jasmine now said:
“I can signal, can’t I, Roxy?”
Roxy shook her head. “No, Father said: ‘No signalling’ so we can’t,” and for a few moments the girls walked on in silence, while behind them Etta-Belle sang:
“De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
We’ll raise de rice an’ corn,
Oh! Nebber yo’ fear if nebber yo’ hear
De driver blow his horn.”
Etta-Belle had been born a slave; her early home had been in South Carolina, and she never told anyone how she had found her way to the hills of Maryland. Dulcie was sure that Etta-Belle had run away from the plantation where she had lived a slave; but the negro woman kept her secret. She now declared that she was “gwine ter b’long ter Missy Roxy, an’ take keer ob her,” and she smiled broadly whenever the little girls turned to speak to her.
The little party rested at the old sycamore, and then started up the slope to the ledge. Jasmine and Myrtle climbed sturdily to the top, but little Ivy had to be carried most of the way by Etta-Belle, and Roxy dragged the basket of lunch, lifting it to rocks above her, or pulling it up from shelving ledges over which she had climbed.
They were all tired when they reached the scrubby oak tree, where they found “Dinah” safely resting in her own house. The squirrels could be heard scolding, and soon ventured from their hiding-places when Roxy called their names and put bits of gingerbread where they could see it.
Ivy was delighted when one of the squirrels was coaxed near enough to nibble a piece of gingerbread that she held toward him on the end of a stick, and wanted Roxy to catch him and carry him home. But Roxy shook her head.
“That would make him a prisoner, and I wouldn’t do that,” she said, and told the story of the Yankee boy whom she had fed and helped on his way. “The squirrel would hate being shut up just as much as that Yankee soldier did,” she said soberly.