As he turned his steps toward the house, McCalloway saw the Colonel rouse himself from his afternoon nap in his verandah chair. That morning's Courier-Journal slipped down from the forehead it had been screening against the sun, and the Colonel became aware of a presence at his side. Moses, his butler, stood there with juleps on a tray.
As McCalloway arrived on the verandah and took his glass from the negro, his host rose with a yawning and apologetic smile. "If you'll pardon me, sir," he said, "I'll leave you long enough to dip my sleepy face into a basin of cold water." But when the master had gone the servant lingered until, with an inquisitive impulse, McCalloway put a question.
"Moses, what is your other name? I've never heard it, have I?"
The darkey smiled. "I reckon not, sir. 'Most everybody calls me Colonel Wallifarro's Mose."
The guest reflectively sipped his julep. Moses had always interested him by virtue of his decorous address, which escaped the usual negro pomposity as entirely as his speech escaped the negro dialect. Moses was endowed, not with manners but with a manner—to himself, McCalloway had almost said "the grand manner." It was as if his life, close to fine and sincere things, had made him, despite his blackness of skin, also a gentleman.
"But you have a surname, I dare say."
"Yes, sir. Wallver."
"The same as the Colonel's?"
The butler smiled with an infectious good humour and bowed his head.
"Yes, sir. In slave times we servants took our names from our masters. I reckon my parents did like the rest. But the coloured people spell it the shortest way."