“You must excuse our visitor, Billy. He has been used to the convenience of a large plantation laundry.”
“Well, I think he ought to staid there.”
“We will put out Mr. Bolling’s washing.”
“And put yourself to an extra ’spense, and not have clothes half done? No, I can’t ’pose on you that way, neither. Well, I’ll not give warning yet awhile! I’ll see how long I can stand it!” And Billy left the room, and took more pains to please his gentle mistress that day than he ever did before.
There was no love lost on Mr. Bolling’s side either, and—“Insolent fellow!” and “Is he an idiot?” and “You all spoil that fellow of yours, Mark!” fell often from his lips, and sometimes in honest Billy’s hearing. And one day, while the family were all gathered round the dinner-table, Mr. Bolling said to his niece and nephew—“My dear children, I must request you to drop the name of Uncle Billy, and substitute Uncle William, when you address me. There are two of that name in this house, and if you call me Uncle Billy, strangers might confound me in some way with Billy Bumpkin in the kitchen there, which would not be complimentary.”
Rosalie afterwards thought that her factotum must have heard these offensive remarks; for the next evening, as she entered the kitchen, to order supper, he approached her respectfully, and said—
“Mrs. Sutherland, ma’am, if you please, ma’am, I would be thankful if you’d be so good as to call me William, which is the name given me by my sponsors in baptism, and not ‘Billy,’ for fear people might get me jumbled up in their minds along o’ that fat, lazy man, in white teeth and linen, which would lose me my good character, and be very onpleasant to my friends.”
CHAPTER XXXI.
MAGNANIMITY.
“Though with my high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my anger