"Heigh ho!" she exclaimed, rising as soon as that song was over. "Now that I have made myself and all of you sad, I'll go to bed and sleep it off, as the drunkards do."
"Stay a moment," I said. "Remember, you promised to show me where my new acquaintance, Nat Turner, lives."
"Did I?" she answered. "I don't remember; but I'll do it, cousin; and, as you are curious in ebony, I'll introduce you to a stick of another tree; but a very curious one too--one of the best old men that ever lived, and one of the wisest also, although he is a pure African. There's something curious about Nat Turner, something mysterious, supernatural; but if ever there was a pure, gentle-minded Christian--an Israelite without guile--it is good uncle Jack."
"When shall it be, then?" I asked.
"Oh, after breakfast to-morrow," she answered. "Mrs. Stringer fancies that if I go out so early in the morning, the dews will give me a fever, though they have been falling on my head almost every day for one-and-twenty years--there's a confession, cousin Richard, don't I look like seventeen? I must make haste, dear Mrs. Stringer, or I shall lose my chance. Women are looked upon as old women at two-and-twenty. Dear me! What a deal to be done in one year--to find somebody to fall in love with--to get him to fall in love with me--to fall in love with him myself (that's the most difficult and longest task of them all)--to get married (but that's nothing; it can be done in half an hour)--and to get all my wedding clothes ready. But, good night, good night. I'll go and arrange it all with Julia while she is combing my hair; and I dare say I shall get through--with patience and perseverance."
[CHAPTER XI.]
It was a beautiful morning, and the breakfast was over by eight o'clock, notwithstanding the tremendously long grace with which Mr. McGrubber thought fit to season it. There was some chance, therefore, of a cool walk, although I could not think Mrs. Stringer's plan a good one; for it seems to me that the early mornings and the late evenings are the only endurable periods in a Virginian summer. Bessy Davenport ran up stairs to get some covering for her head; and I stood in the porch waiting for her, ready for our visit to my mysterious negro, and to the no less remarkable personage to whom she had promised to introduce me. But a moment before she came down, who should appear but Billy Byles coming round from the stable where he had put up his horse.
"It is all arranged," he said, speaking in a low tone, and shaking me by the hand. "On Saturday morning at six, in Hunter's Wood."
"Why, that is three days still," I said, somewhat annoyed at the delay.
"We couldn't arrange it otherwise," he answered; "the pistols stuck in Bob Thornton's throat desperately. He did not care a d----n how he fought you for that matter--muskets and buckshot as lief as any other way; but he should have to send for pistols. I told him we were in the same predicament, but that pistols it must be; and so we fixed Saturday morning to give him time. You had better come over and dine with me on Friday, and take a bed at----" Just then appeared Bessy Davenport, and he stopped short; but I answered at once, as if he had concluded his sentence, "With a great deal of pleasure; at what hour do you dine?"