ALMOST A RESOLUTION
Shortly after breakfast next day the Colonel dispatched Uncle Zack and his mule with a note to Jane. He might have telephoned this message, which simply read: "He understands, with an amplitude of grace which ill befits him. Come over this morning and straighten Lizzie out with her preserving. I hear that she is skinning every negro on the place, and I greatly fear for them, or her."
But, no; this must be on a written page and delivered by hand, for the old Colonel averred that no gentleman should assume to shriek his voice by mechanical device into the ear of a gentlewoman. In cases of illness, accident or fire, or perhaps in pressing business needs, the telephone had its uses; but a faux pas of the first order was to employ it socially.
So Zack's mule ambled down the pike and home again, bringing a reply which sparkled with merriment between its lines: "You have the maternal instinct of that lady who lived in a shoe! I'll be over to soothe Miss Liz and her poor, flayed darkies."
Arriving some hours later, she and Mac went directly to the shed where bright copper kettles were hanging in a row above the old fashioned, stone oven fires. Several negro women were moving quickly and silently about, frightened and getting into each other's way. But now, as she drew near, there was a commotion, and she saw Miss Liz actually lay hands upon a girl of about seventeen and roughly draw her away from one of the simmering pots. Unobserved, and in utter amazement, Jane stood and stared at them.
"What were you about to do?" Miss Liz cried excitedly.
"I—I drapped de spoon in," the girl began to whimper.
"And were going to thrust in your hand and get it scalded to the bone?"
"I'se—I'se 'feerd you'd scold," she put her head down in her arm.
"Now, Amanda," Miss Liz looked at her reprovingly, "if you think I've nothing to do but sit up nights making poultices on account of your idiocy, you're very much mistaken! What does a spoon in the preserves amount to compared with your suffering?—and my suffering, when I'll be dead for sleep with nursing you? What do you all mean," she turned angrily upon the others, "by standing there and letting her attempt such a thing?"