‘Ask Miss Lizzie to fill it with fresh sherbet or milk for me, Rosa, and tell her I am coming in to breakfast with her by-and-by.’
The residents in hot climates invariably partake of two breakfasts; one a light meal taken at break of day, and the other a more substantial one, which they can discuss at leisure when the morning’s business is concluded. Rosa, who was a lazy wench, who preferred running messages, or doing odd jobs, to regular work at any time, ran with alacrity to the Doctor’s bungalow, and began to sneak around it. A negro employed on business can very seldom go straight to the matter in hand. He generally slinks about first, peering into windows, and listening at doors, and on this wise it came about that Rosa’s cunning face was very soon to be seen at the open window of Liz Fellows’ room. The apartment was empty, Liz having just left it to go to that of her father, but from a bundle of flannel on the bed proceeded a wailing cry, which roused all Rosa’s curiosity. The black people are proverbially curious, but this was a case in which the offence might surely be termed a venial one. And with poor Rosa too, who had so lately been bereft of her own child.
As soon as she recognised the cry, she leapt into the room through the window, and rushed up to the bed. Yes! it was actually a baby, and a white baby too, and in Miss Liz’s bed! What inference but one could be drawn in any ignorant mind from such a circumstance? Miss Liz, who had been so angry with her for the same thing; who had said her poor little Carlo had better never have been born; who had talked so much to her of virtue, and purity, and the sanctity of marriage. Miss Liz had a baby in her bed, that she had never told anybody about! Here was a glorious opportunity for revenge. Rosa’s eyes rolled about and showed their yellow whites as she thought of it. Miss Liz hadn’t pitied her, or so she chose to believe. Why should she pity Miss Liz? And why shouldn’t Massa Courcelles, and all the niggers, and the people at the White House, know what she had done? The engagement between Liz and Henri de Courcelles had been kept so secret that no one could say it was a positive fact, but most of the plantation hands knew he had courted the Doctor’s daughter, and believed that it would end in marriage. Rosa showed all her white teeth as she chuckled over the idea that now perhaps the overseer would have nothing more to do with Miss Lizzie, and she would be pointed at and scorned, as Rosa had been, when first she appeared out of doors with little Carlo in her arms. As the yellow girl thought thus, she slipped off the bed, where, she had mounted to better examine the baby, and left the room as noiselessly as she had entered it. A cunning idea had flashed across her brain,—that if Miss Lizzie caught her there, she would hide the infant, and no one would be ever the wiser. So she must get back to the field without seeing her, and invent some excuse for her return, on the way. She was quite ready with it by the time she reached the side of De Courcelles, and she lied so glibly that at first he did not suspect her of an untruth.
‘Miss Liz have got no sherbet, Massa! She very sick all night, and drink all de sherbet. But Miss Liz want to see you berry particuler and berry directly, please, Massa. She got something berry important to say; and she tell me,—“Rosa, go and fetch Massa Courcelles here directly, and come back with him all de way.”’
‘That’s a curious message, Rosa. What does Miss Liz want you for?’ asked De Courcelles, as he turned his steps towards the bungalow, with the yellow girl by his side.
‘How can I tell Massa Courcelles? P’r’aps Miss Liz want me to mind de baby a bit. P’r’aps she want to ask my ’pinion. Miss Liz know how well I look after my poor little Carlo ’fore de fever come and taken him to heaven.’
The words naturally attracted the overseer’s attention.
‘The baby!’ he exclaimed, taken off his guard. ‘What do you mean?’
Rosa’s cunning eyes looked full into his own.
‘You not know?’ she said inquisitively. ‘Miss Liz not tell you she got a little baby at the bungalow—and in her own bed too? Ah, Miss Liz berry sly—but it’s truth, Massa. I have seen it with my own eyes. A little white baby, too, only dressed like a little nigger in a cotton shirt.’