“Yes’m, Miss Dee, there is,” the girl confessed with marked hesitation, but in a moment it came out with a rush. “Miss Dee, is you-all some sort of a Yankee?”
“No, not any kind,” Dorothea answered with a smile. “My mother was your Old Miss’s sister, but my father is a Scot and we live in England, or at least we have always called England our home.”
Lucy was evidently disappointed.
“Then you can’t tell me what the Yankees is gwine to do with we-all when we’s free,” she murmured half to herself.
Dorothea shook her head.
“The North has first to win the war, Lucy,” she answered. “If they do, you will have to take care of yourselves and earn your own livings like white people, I suppose.”
“An’ how’s we-all gwine to do that without any white-folks learnin’?” demanded the girl.
“Oh, you could do it by taking care of some one as you do of me,” Dorothea explained.
Lucy’s eyes widened.
“Do they pay real money up No’th just for brushin’ hair and foldin’ up youh pretties?” she asked excitedly. “An’ could I be free too? But I guess you must mean Confedrit money, Miss Dee. You don’t know there’s a sayin’ that a whole bahrel full of it won’t pay foh the bunghole.”