“Yas, sah.”
Any further comment would have been presumptuous. None of this conversation, as he well knew, having been addressed to himself.
“And now, stop genuflecting, you chunk of darkness, and listen. Step down-stairs, rap gently and discreetly at the closed portal of the Ford family and pass in this letter.”
“Yes, sah, and den what?” He was included now.
“Nothing what, unless the young lady should open the door, when you will ask her if there is any answer. If she says there is, and gives it to you, you will bring it up here on the dead run.”
“And s’pose dat de—dat de—well, dat de gemman himself opens it?”
“What, the letter?”
“No, sah; de do’.”
“Hand him the letter all the same, say there is no answer; none of any kind, and to prove it, amble down into your own coal-hole.”
Moses reached for the missive, laid it across the creases of his wrinkled palm, and with a remark, “dat his old marse, Marse Robin, had one of dem little seals hangin’ to his watch-fob,” closed the door behind him.