“I dried them myself,” she continued, taking no notice of his last assertion. “Such work as I had, too! I really think if Milly hadn’t helped me, you’d ’a’ been in—in—in your green silk quilt now.”
She leaned forward for some moments, laughing, with her head against the music-rack, so that the piano reverberated shrilly with the clear sound. Roden laughed with her.
“Who told you—the little nigger?” he asked. “And who is Milly?”
She got suddenly to her feet, as suddenly becoming grave, and closed the piano.
“Milly’s one o’ th’ darkies,” she said. “Come and get your supper.”
He followed her across the wide hall into the dining-room, and found that supper at Caryston Hall was a very pretty meal. It was served on finest but much-darned damask, by the light of six tall candles in silver candlesticks, each ornamented by a little petticoat of scarlet silk, which gave them the appearance of diminutive coryphées pirouetting on one slender wax leg. A bowl of violets and primroses occupied the centre of the table, flanked on either side by crystal dishes, filled, the one with the pale amber of honey, the other with the deep crimson of cranberries.
The overseer’s daughter poured out tea behind a great silver urn, while on her right hand a monstrous cut-glass flagon foamed with richest milk. “Positively artistic,” thought Roden, feeling a certain respect in his British breast for this little maiden of Virginia who could evolve out of her own country-bred brain effects so charming. “It’s a beastly pity!” he told himself, though in what the pity consisted he could not quite have told any one else, unless perhaps that a being so gifted with a talent for instrumental music, and the setting forth of appetizing supper-tables, should be hemmed in from further progress by the scarlet soil of her native State, and should murder his sovereign’s language with ruthless regularity by beheading some words and cutting the remainder in two.
He also pondered somewhat as to the way in which Virginian overseers and their children expected to be treated by resident foreigners. He noticed that the girl ate nothing herself, sitting with her hand in her lap after she had poured out his cup of tea, and pulling idly at the frayed edge of the table-cloth, with eyes downcast. He wished very much that he knew how to address her, and was casting about in his mind as to how he might find out her surname without being rude, when she answered him directly.
“My name is Virginia”—she said “Faginia”—but it came softly to the ear—“Virginia Herrick.”
“They ought to have called you ‘Julia,’ Miss Herrick,” said the young Englishman, gravely regarding her grave face.