“Do you mean that all the old servants moved off together?”
“Yas’m. Ev’y last one un um. Dey’s all w’ite folks dar now.”
“When did that happen?”
But, as I was beginning to discover, time and space are the flimsiest abstractions in the imagination of the negro. “Hit wuz a long time ago. Miss Effie,” replied Uncle Moab. “Pell, he wa’n much mo’n a baby den. He wuz jes’ in dresses, en he’s done been in breeches now fur a pa’cel er Christmas times.”
“Pell? Is that the child of the first Mrs. Blanton?”
“Yas’m. He’s Miss Clarissa’s chile. Miss Hannah Twine, she’s got a heap er chillun; dar’s two pa’cel er twins en den de baby dat wuz bo’n las’ winter. But Pell, he ain’t ’er chile.”
I was beginning to see light. “Then Pell must be about seven years old, and you moved off the place while he was still in short dresses. That must have been just four or five years ago.”
“Dat’s hit, honey, dat’s hit.”
“And all the coloured servants moved away at the same time?”
“De same day. Dar wa’nt er one un um lef dar by sundown.”