“How can the slaves buy them? Do they have money?”
“Money! yes.”
“Why, they have Sundays and holidays to themselves, and what they earn they have. Many of them have earned enough to buy their freedom, and are well off. Do you go over to our house, and ask John to give you some turnip-seed, and sow it on that ground you burned over when you was roasting Joe Griffin, and see what turnips will grow there; you can hack the seed in with the hoe; turnips will sell first rate in the West Indies; I’ll tell them they are Yankee yams.”
“But how will you get your things home? you will have no vessel to come in.”
“Let me alone for that, Charlie; I’m an old traveller.”
It may be well to inform our readers that in those days but comparatively few vegetables were carried there, and they brought a high price in the way of barter.
Charlie was by no means slack in acting upon these suggestions, and made baskets with all his might.
It was a most comical sight to see Ben holding his baby; his thumb was bigger than the infant’s leg, and his great hairy arms contrasted strangely enough with the white, delicate flesh of the new-born child. He held it, too, in such a funny way, with the tips of his fingers, as if afraid he should squat it to death, and with an expression of anxiety upon his face amounting almost to anguish.
“I mean to make a cradle for him,” said Charlie.