Carl laughed. "Can't keep anything from your Yankee eyes, can I, Mark?" he said. "But I only went a little way."
"It isn't the distance, it's the folly," said Mark, shortly, going toward the house.
"I never pretended to be wise," answered Carl, slouching along behind him, with his hands wrapped in his blue cotton handkerchief, arranged like a muff.
Although Deal worked hard in his fields all day, he did not cook. In a third out-building lived a gray-headed old negro with one eye, who cooked for the new tenant—and cooked well. His name was Scipio, but Carl called him Africanus; he said it was equally appropriate, and sounded more impressive. Scip's kitchen was out-of-doors—simply an old Spanish chimney. His kettle and few dishes, when not in use, hung on the sides of this chimney, which now, all alone in the white sand, like an obelisk, cooked solemnly the old negro's messes, as half a century before it had cooked the more dignified repasts of the dead hidalgos. The brothers ate in the open air also, sitting at a rough board table which Mark had made behind the house. They had breakfast soon after daylight, and at sunset dinner; in the middle of the day they took only fruit and bread.
"Day after to-morrow will be Christmas," said Carl, leaving the table and lighting his long pipe. "What are you going to do?"
"I had not thought of doing anything in particular."
"Well, at least don't work on Christmas day."
"What would you have me do?"
Carl took his pipe from his mouth, and gazed at his brother in silence for a moment. "Go into the swamp with me," he urged, with sudden vehemence. "Come—for the whole day!"
Deal was smoking, too, a short clay pipe, very different from the huge, fantastic, carved bowl with long stem which weighed down Carl's thin mouth. "I don't know what to do with you, boy. You are mad about the swamp," he said, smoking on calmly.