Naturally, with her boys debarred from Middies' Haven, Mrs. Harold could do little for the girls, and their only sources of pleasure lay in such amusements as the town afforded and these were extremely limited. So much time was spent at Severndale with Peggy, and it was during one of these visits that Mrs. Harold figured in one of the domestic episodes of Severndale. They were not new to Peggy for she was Southern-born and used to the vagaries and childlike outbreaks of the colored people. But even though Mrs. Harold had lived among them a great deal, and thought she understood them pretty thoroughly, she had yet to learn some of the African's eccentricities.
January dragged on, the girls working with Captain Pennell and Dr. Llewellyn. During the month, one of the hands, Joshua Jozadak Jubal Jones, by the way, fell ill with typhoid fever, and was removed to the hospital. From the first his chances of recovery seemed doubtful, and "Minervy" his wife, as strapping, robust a specimen of her race as poor Joshua was tiny and, as she expressed it, "pore and pindlin'," was in a most emotional frame of mind. Again and again she came up to the great house to "crave consolatiom" from Miss Peggy, or Mammy Lucy, though, truth to tell, Mammy's sympathies were not very deeply enlisted. Minervy Jones did not move in the same SOCIAL SET in which Mammy held a dignified position: Mammy was "an emerged Baptis'"; Minervy a "Shoutin' Mefodist," and a strong feeling existed between the two little colored churches. Peggy visited the hospital daily and saw that Joshua lacked for nothing. Mrs. Harold was deeply concerned for Peggy's sake, for Peggy looked to the well-being of all the help upon the estate with the deep interest which generations of her ancestors had manifested, indeed regarded as incumbent upon them and part of their obligation to their dependents.
Days passed and poor Joshua grew no better, Minervy meanwhile spending most of her time in Aunt Cynthia's kitchen where she could sustain the inner woman with many a tidbit from the white folks' table, and speculate upon what was likely to become of them if her "pore lil chillern were left widderless orphans." It need hardly be added that the prospective "widderless orphans" were left to shift largely for themselves while she was accepting both mental and physical sustenance.
It was upon one of these visits, so indefinitely prolonged that Mammy's patience was at the snapping point, that she decided to give a needed hint. Entering the kitchen she said to Aunt Cynthia:
"'Pears ter me yo' must have powerful lot o' time on han', Sis' Cynthy."
"Well'm I AIN'T. No ma'am, not me," was Cynthia's prompt reply, for to tell the truth she was beginning to weary of doling out religious consolation and bodily sustenance, yet hospitality demanded something.
"Well, I reckons Miss Peggy's cravin' fer her luncheon, an' it's high time she done got it, too. Is yo' know de time?"
"Cou'se I knows de time," brindled Cynthia, "but 'pears lak time don' count wid some folks. Kin YO' see de clock, Mis' Jones?"
The question was sprung so suddenly that Minerva jumped.
"Yas'm, yas'm, Mis' Johnson, I kin see hit; yis, I kin," answered
Minervy, craning her neck for a pretended better view.