“Yo’ kin give me dat too if yo’ wantter, but I wants de sign on de letter too, an’ yo’ full name, Mr. Elijah Sniffins, ter boot, you knows what yo’ jist done said ’bout trus’in’ folks, an’ yo’ don’ berlong ter de Rogersers, ner de Wellmans, ner de Stuyvesants, but I berlongs ter de Blairsdales!”
Mammy grew nearly three inches taller as she made this statement, while her hearer seemed to grow visibly shorter. The receipt was duly filled out, likewise an acknowledgment written upon the blank side of Mrs. Carruth’s letter and Elijah Sniffins’ name signed thereto. Mammy took them scrutinized both with great care (she could not read one word) nodded and said:
“Huh, Um. Yas, sir. I reckon dat all squar’. If de house burn down ter night we all gwine git de ’surance sure ’nough. Yas—yas.”
“You certainly could collect whatever was comin’ to you,” Mr. Sniffins assured her, his late supercilious smile replaced by a most obsequious one for this representative of the possessors of the dollars he worshiped. Mr. Sniffins meant to have a good many dollars himself some day and the luxuries which dollars stand for.
Mammy nodded, and placing the receipt and letter in her bag gave a slight nod and turned to leave the office. Mr. Sniffins hurried to open the door for her. As she was about to cross the threshold she paused, eyed him keenly from the crown of his smoothly brushed head to his patent-leather-shod feet and then asked:
“Huccum yo’ opens de do’ fer niggers? Ef yo’ b’longed ter de quality yo’d let de niggers open de do’s fer yo. Yo’ better run ’long an’ ten’ yo’ ma’s sody foun’in ’twell yo’ learns de quality manners.”
An hour later Mammy was busy in her kitchen, the receipts safely pinned within her bodice and no one the wiser for the morning’s business transaction.
[CHAPTER VIII—Chemical Experiments]
“Eleanor! Eleanor! where are you?” cried Constance at the foot of the third-story stairs the following day after luncheon.
Blue Monday had passed with its dull gray clouds and chill winds to give place to one of those rare, warm days which sometimes come to us late in October, as though the glorious autumn were loath to depart and had turned back for a last smile upon the land it loved.