“I’ll have to do that, Tom,” Manse said defensively. “This is the first time she has been on land since I bought her. Now, I’d like to leave her here with you all the time, but if you won’t keep her——”
“I won’t,” Gaitskill snapped. “You can bet on it, I won’t!”
“Well, keep her here for me for two weeks,” Manse pleaded. “I’ve got to run up to St. Louis on some business, and when I come back, I’ll take her away with me.”
“That sounds easy,” Gaitskill remarked. “Do you think Diada will stay with me?”
“Yes, if I tell her to.”
“All right,” Gaitskill assented. “I’ll keep her. I’ll turn her over to the care of the niggers and forget her—if I can. But I want you to give her all the instructions necessary for the next two weeks. I don’t speak cannibal.”
II
HITCH HAS VAGUE MISGIVINGS
When Captain Lemuel Manse and his wife had been whirled away in the Gaitskill automobile to the Tickfall landing where their yacht awaited them in the Mississippi River, Gaitskill sat down on the porch to think over his troubles.
Diada stood before him on the lawn, motionless and ugly as a heathen idol, her eyes still watching the purple haze above the swamp.
“Something over in that swamp has got to be hypnotized,” Gaitskill muttered to himself as he watched her. “When she gets a little tame I’ll take her for a trip to the hog-camp. I suppose she never saw anything but a cocoanut palm.”