“Pulaski,” said Mrs. Warren, correcting her, and smiling through her tears.
“Well, Poorlackey or Puleskaski; it’s all one, I spose,” replied Dinah, with an air of offended dignity. But, relenting immediately, she added, “Now, Missus, ef yer’ll just eat a little bit of somethin’, say de wing of dat boiled chicken, dat’s a spoilin’ wid waitin,’ you’ll feel like anodder person; deed yer will.”
The eloquence of Dinah, who continued expatiating on this subject for some time, finally induced Mrs. Warren to consent to her wishes. Buoyed up with the persuasion that Pomp would soon return, bringing intelligence of Kate, she ate with appetite, and indeed forgot for a season her niece, in the delicacies before her.
Meantime, Pomp had saddled the colt and set forth, but with reluctant steps, for his thoughts reverted to his adventure of the preceding evening, and his teeth shook in anticipation, when he remembered that his road would lie directly past the spot where he had been set upon, as he conscientiously believed, by the Arch Enemy. As he approached the head of the pond, he drew the colt into a walk, and began to soliloquize thus with himself:
“Yer’s in a fix now, Pomp, ef ebber yer was. Ef yer go after young Missus, de debbil will cotch you sure; and ef yer don’t go, yer daddy’ll skin you.”
He had now reached the point where the two roads met, that to the right leading past the church and across the bridge, and that to the left conducting to Aunt Chloe’s and Mr. Herman’s. He came to a dead halt.
“Yer’ll be a darn fool, Pomp,” he soliloquized again, and his teeth began to chatter with the thought, “to run right into de jaws of de debbil, arter havin’ got off once. He’s a lyin’ dar, like a roarin’ lion, ready to jump out on yer.”
As he thus reflected, he slowly turned the colt’s head to the right.
“Pears to me,” he resumed, glancing affrightedly over his shoulder towards the haunted road, “dat poor young Missus has been a took off by dis ole Satan; and dat it wouldn’t do no good, sartin it wouldn’t, to go arter her. It would ony be givin’ yerself, Pomp, to de debbil, deed it would.”
The colt’s head was now turned even more to the bridge, and Pomp had actually permitted it to walk a few paces in its direction, when suddenly he checked the animal.