“My father pays a maid at home to take care of me,” Dorothea pointed out, with a laugh. “But I don’t think she’s any better off than you are.”
“That’s what Merry’s always a-sayin’,” Lucy agreed.
“I would be quite satisfied if I were you,” said Dorothea. “You are as comfortable now as you are ever likely to be.”
“Yes’m, that’s what I think—but what’s I gwine to do if some of ’em meddlin’ Yankees come along and set me free? That’s what I’m askin’ yoh.”
Lucy was still grumbling to herself as she moved out of the room. Dorothea watched her go, realizing another of the problems of the South for the first time, and getting a hint of the state of mind of the slaves, who had so vague an idea of what their future was to be.
She sat for a moment, but the flapping of the curtain in front of the window annoyed her and, going to it, she closed the sash so that the wind might not blow in. Then she went back to her book by the table and tried to read.
She had scarcely turned a page, however, when she was startled by three short raps upon the window pane and, turning toward it, she saw a hand reaching up from below ready to tap again.
For an instant Dorothea’s heart jumped with apprehension, and then she thought of Lee Hendon and all fear left her. She ran to the window and, lifting it again, leaned out. As she expected, the dark form of a man cowered on the gallery roof below the window ledge.
A pale face looked up at her in the darkness.
Lucy’s prophecy as a result of the falling knife had come true. Here indeed was a stranger come to see her.