“Oh, I’m just too glad. And the poor little chickies—served him just right. I was afraid he’d get out and run away.”
The Colonel stole a look at Jim. The scrap stood looking into the fire, a wondering expression on his face. How much of the story was truth and how much fiction evidently puzzled Jim.
During the telling everybody in the room, Fitz, Miss Nancy—all of us, in fact,—had been watching Katy’s delight and Jim’s eager brown face, turned to the Colonel, the whites of his eyes big as saucers. Watching, too, the Colonel’s impartial manner to both of his listeners—black and white alike—the only distinction being that the black boy stood, while the white child lay nestled in his arms.
Chad, as the story progressed, had crept up behind the Colonel’s chair, where he could hear without being seen, and was listening as eagerly as if he were a boy again. He had often told me that his old master, the Colonel’s father, used to tell him and the Colonel stories when they were boys together, but I had never seen the Colonel in the rôle before.
When the allusion to the cigarettes escaped the Colonel’s lips a smile overspread Chad’s visage, and a certain triumphant look crept into his eyes. With the child’s laughter still ringing through the room, Chad tapped Jim on the arm, led him to one side, held his lean, wrinkled finger within an inch of the boy’s nose and said in a sepulchral tone:
“Did ye hear dat? Do ye know who dat sassy, low-lived, mizzable, no-count, ornery turkey was, dat kep’ a-swellin’ up, thinkin’ he was free an’ somebody great till dat caarvin’ knife tuk his head off? Dat’s you!”
In the midst of this scene, Katy still in the Colonel’s arms, Aunt Nancy knitting quietly, talking to Fitz in an undertone, and I forming part of the circle around the fire, watching the Colonel’s delight and joy over his new guest—the dining-room door was pushed open, and Mr. Klutchem stepped in.
“I found the outside door ajar, Colonel,” he blurted out, “and heard you all laughing, and so I just walked in. Been here long, Katy?”