After she had answered various queries about house and out-house, niggers and stables, they returned to the dining-room, and lifting one of the tall candlesticks from a side-table, she opened one of the many doors.
“I’m going to father’s room,” she announced; “’f you like you can come too. Most of ’em” (alluding probably to the preceding Englishmen)—“most of ’em liked to smoke there. I’ve got my spinnin’ an’ some things to do. Ef you want to stay here, there’s books.” She made a comprehensive sweep with her candleless hand in the direction of a low bookcase which ran around three sides of the room.
“I think I’ll come with you, if you really don’t mind,” said Roden.
“Lor’, no!” she hastened to assure him. “But ’f you don’t like dogs an’ ’coons an’ things, you’d better not.”
“Oh, I don’t mind ’coons and—and things,” said Roden, somewhat vaguely. “I’ll come, thank you.”
They went down a long hall, descended a little stair-way whereon the moonlight fell bluely through a square window high above, down more steps, along another passage with sharp turns, and in at an already open door. An old negress, vividly turbaned, was heaping wood upon an already immense fire.
“Lor’, mammy!” called Miss Herrick, “for mercy’s sakes stop! ’F you put any more wood on that fire you’ll have to get up on th’ roof an’ shove ’t down th’ chimney.” The “’coons and things” were already crowding about them.
Roden recognized several of his canine friends of the morning, and there were, moreover, two splendid old hounds, which at sight of their evidently beloved “Faginia” set up a most booming yowl of welcome. There were also the ’coon; a curious flat-stomached little beast, that flew about after a startling fashion from chair to chair, and which Miss Herrick introduced as a “chipmunk;” a corn-crake; a young screech-owl; and three large Persian cats.
All these pets, he discovered later, had been presented from time to time by the “last Englishman,” or “the Englishman before the last,” or “the Englishman before the one with the glass eye,” or the fat wife, or the ugly sister, or what not.
“If I can only add a gorilla or a condor to this unique collection,” reflected Roden, “my position is assured. I will probably be forever the ‘last Englishman,’ and I will always be mentioned as ‘the Englishman who gave me the gorilla.’”