A few minutes later the nurse returned, having a peculiarly bright, three-year-old boy in charge, whom I greeted as an old friend. After talking with the little chap for a few moments I turned to Beavers and said: “What are you going to make out of him, Beavers?”
“Something better than his father is,” he replied, “for his mothers sake; and that reminds me you’re just out of the war and you’ve got your way to make. It won’t do for you to know me. If you ever meet me goin’ up and down the river, I’ll cut you dead and don’t you say nothing.”
CURRY
CURRY was our mess cook.
He was a great rascal, but one of the best cooks in the world. And besides he was discriminative in his rascality. He never did any dishonest thing towards us; but he was capable of any conceivable crime, if he could commit it in our behalf.
He was a pure-blooded negro of the brown or semi-copper-colored variety. He was without a trace of beard, as that variety of negro usually is. His voice was a falsetto.
His devotion was dog-like. If the state of South Carolina held anything that his mess needed, and there was any conceivable way in which it could be got, he got it. Frankly without morals,—unless devotion to his mess was a moral sentiment,—and illimitable in resource as he was, he generally so managed matters that we should live well.
We would buy a pig or a lamb, and have a fore quarter for dinner. The next day Curry would give us a hind quarter. The next day another fore quarter; and so on until that member of the mess who had a statistical mind would begin to reflect that there are really only four quarters to an animal, while we had had from fifteen to twenty quarters from this one. Then Curry would be summoned, and indignantly asked: “Where have you been getting all this meat we have been eating?”
The question never disturbed Curry in the least. He was always ready with the answer: “I buyed it from one man, sir.”
When asked who the man was, he never knew. And when questioned as to payment, he always assured us that the “one man, sir,” was coming that afternoon for his money.