“Bress my two eyes, Miss Sybil! how glad dey is to see you, and you too, Marse Lyon!” exclaimed a very black, short, squarely built, good-humored looking negro coachman, as he came and bowed to his master and mistress.
“Joe! you have been at your old tricks again. Joe! why can’t you let bar-rooms alone? Joe! where do you expect to go when you die?” solemnly inquired Sybil, shaking her finger at the delinquent.
“I do ’spect to go straight to de debbil, miss, for sure! Dat’s de reason why I wants to take a drap of comfort in dis worl’, ’cause I nebber shall get none dere. But bress my two eyes, miss, how glad dey is to look on your putty face again.”
“My ‘putty’ face? I want to know if that’s a compliment? But, Joe, what has Miss Tabby got for supper?”
“Lor bress your putty little mouf, Miss Sybil; it’s easier to tell you what she hasn’t got,” exclaimed Joe, stretching his eyes. “Why, Miss Sybil, there an’t a man nor a maid about the house, what ha’n’t been on their feet all dis day a getting up of that there supper,” he added.
“There! I told you so!” said Sybil, turning to her husband.
“Then let’s go on and eat it, my love. We can leave our two servants here to follow in the wagon with the baggage,” said Lyon Berners, leading his wife and his guest to the carriage, and placing them inside, with the child and nurse, while he himself mounted to the box beside the coachman.
“Oh! I am very sorry Mr. Berners has been crowded out,” regretfully exclaimed Rosa Blondelle, looking after him in surprise as he climbed to his roost.
“Oh, he has not been crowded out! He has gone up there to drive; for the road is not very safe at night, and our coachman is rather too much exhilarated to be trusted,” answered Sybil, touching very tenderly upon the weakness of her old servant.
Their road lay along the bank of the river up the valley, between the two high mountain ridges; but it was so dark that nothing but these grander features of the landscape could be discerned.