He waved his arms, with real tears dimming his vision, and Roxy affected to shed some tears also, as she waved good-bye to Virgie, whose eyes were turned with wistful pain upon the beautiful face of her mistress receding down the vista. Vesta threw her a kiss and reclined her head upon her husband's shoulder.
That evening, an hour before the carriage was to return, Virgie and the free woman, Mary, walked together down to Milburn's store, to see if Jack Wonnell was on the watch. As they trode in the soft grass and sand under the old storehouse they saw the bell-crowned hat—a new one, brought from the ancient stock that very day—shining glossily on Wonnell's high, eccentric head, as he sat in the hollow window of the old storehouse and talked to the mocking-bird, which he was feeding with a clam-shell full of boiled potato and egg, and some blue haws.
"Tom, say 'Roxy,' an' I'll give ye some, Tommy! Now, boy! 'Roxy, Roxy, purty Roxy! purty Roxy! Poor ole Jack! poor ole Jack!'"
The bird flew around Wonnell's head, biting at the hat which stood in such elegant irrelevance to the remainder of his dress, and cried, "Meshach, he! he! he! Vesty, she! Vesty, Meshach! Vesty, Meshach!" but said nothing the village vagrant would teach it. He showed the patience idleness can well afford, and, feeding it a little, or withholding the food awhile, continued to plead and teach:
"'Roxy, Roxy, purty Roxy! Poor, pore Jack! pore Jack!' Now, Tom, say 'Roxy, Roxy, pore Jack!'"
The bird flew and struck, and sang a little, very niggardly, and so, as the lights in the west sank and faded, the shiftless lover continued in vain to seek to give the bird one note more than the magician, his master, had taught.
The stars modestly appeared in the soft heavens, and Princess Anne gathered its roofs together like a camp of camels in the desert, and, with an occasional bleat or bark or human sound, seemed dozing out the soft fall night, absorbed, perhaps, in the spreading news of Mrs. Custis's death and Vesta's wedding-journey, that had to be taken at last.
"Miss Virgie," said the woman Mary—ten years her senior, but comely still—"have you ever loved like me? Oh, I had a kind husband, and, helpless as I was, I tried to love once more. Maybe it was a sin."
"I love my mistress as if she was myself," Virgie said; "I feel as if, in heaven, before we came here, I was with her, Mary! I love her father, too, as if he was not my master, but my friend. Oh, how I love them all! But what can I do to show my love—poor naked slave that I am? They say they will soon set me free. Mary, how do people feel when they are free?"
"They don't appreciate it," sighed Mary. "They go and put themselves in captivity again, like selfish things: they falls in love."