“Shet yo mouf, en git out o’ dis kitchen, boy; you cayent skeer me; I can give you as good es you can sen’ any day. De white folks knows I ain’t got but two han’s and can’t do a hundred things in a minit.” She put the child down, however, and resumed her dish washing.
The girls in the meantime had retouched their disheveled curls and joined the young men in the parlor, where for a time music, songs and dances made the hours fly. Let us play “Straw,” said Nelly Jones.
“No, let Captain Prince lead and choose the game,” said Arabella.
So the captain seated the company in line. “Now,” said he, “not one of you must crack a smile on pain of forfeit, and when I say prepare to pucker, you must all do so,”—drawing out as he spoke the extraordinary aperture in his own good-natured face, extending his lips into an automatic, gigantic, wooden smirk reaching almost from ear to ear. Everybody giggled of course, but he went on: “I shall call out ‘Pucker,’ and you must instantly face about with your mouths fixed this way”—and he drew up his wonderful feature small enough to dine with the stork out of a jar. The company shouted, but the game was never played, for reproof and entreaty, joined to the captain’s word of command, failed to get them beyond a preparatory attempt which ended always in screams of laughter.
The sun was getting low in the west when another want began to appeal to the inner consciousness of these young persons. Some of them had ridden for miles in the morning air; since then they had sung and danced and laughed in unlimited fashion. Now they began to think of some other refreshment. Arabella ventured to request that Captain Prince be sent to the kitchen to reconnoiter and bring in a report from the commissary department. The captain responded amiably, and said she was a sensible young lady. “Vine, ain’t you hungry?” asked Arabella. “Oh, I took some luncheon before you came,” replied she; “if you will go up-stairs and look in the basket under my dressing table, you will find some sandwiches, but not enough for all.” The girl flew up-stairs.
When Captain Prince returned the girls rushed forward and overpowered him with questions. He threw up his hands deprecatingly and waved off his noisy assailants. “Stop, stop, young ladies, I will make my report. I went round to the kitchen and found Aunt Becky behind the chimney ripping off the feathers of a turkey so big” (holding his hands nearly a yard apart). “I got a coal o’ fire to light my pipe, then I made a memorandum.” Here he pulled out an old empty pocketbook and pretended to read—“Item 1st, ‘Fowl picking at three o’clock,’ that means dinner at six. Can you wait that long?”
“Never!” cried the girls.
“Well, we must then go into an election for a new housekeeper who will go in person or send a strong committee who will whoop up the cook and expedite the meal which is to refresh these fair ladies and brave men,”—and he began to count them.
“Don’t number me in your impolite crowd,” said Arabella, “for I am content to wait until dinner is ready.” Vine gave her a meaning smile and went up pleadingly to the captain, rolling her fine eyes in the innocent, sweet way characteristic of some of the most fascinating of her sex, and begging him to continue to be the life and soul of her party, as he always was everywhere he went: she said if he would “start something diverting,” she would go and stir Becky up and have dinner right off—she would, “honest Indian.”
These girls were not sufficiently polite to keep up a pleased appearance when bored. Such little artificialities of society belonged to the days of peace. They flatly refused to dance, saying they were tired. One avowed that she was sorry she had persuaded her mother to let her come to such a poky affair, and another declared that she had never been anywhere in her whole lifetime before where there was not cake, fruit, candy, popcorn, pindars, or something handed round when dinner was as late as this. “Oh,” said Nelly Jones, “I wish I had a good stalk of sugar-cane.” In fact a cloud seemed to settle down in the parlors like smoke in murky weather.