“Yes, Master George, I’m here, and it’s time I was,” he cried, sourly. “Do you think your father and me grafted them peach trees, and coaxed ’em on into bearing, for you to feed niggers with them?”
“I’ve a right to do what I like with the fruit, if I don’t eat it,” I said, angrily.
“Oh, very well; I’ve done. Seems to me that if master’s to be always bullying me on one side, and you on the other, the sooner I make up my bundle and go home to Carnarvon, the better.”
“That’s what you always say, Morgan,” I replied, laughing; “but you never do go.”
“Ah, but you’ll see some day; and then you’ll be sorry,” he grumbled, and away he went.
“I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” I thought; “but he needn’t be so disagreeable about the poor black fellows.”
After a time I went to the shelter and looked in, to see that the man was lying with his eyes opened; and, recalling what my father had said, I gave him some bread and wine, which he ate as it was put to his lips, in a dull, forbidding way which took all the pleasure out of what I had thought was an act of kindness.
The peaches had disappeared, and I was saying to myself, “You might have given him one!” when I found that both of them were lying close to the black’s head untouched.
About sunset my father came and looked at his purchase in a very grave way, and then apparently satisfied he drew back.
“The man is recovering,” he said. “We saved his life, my boy, but they must not stay there to-night. I hardly believe that an alligator would attack them; but one great fellow has been travelling through the garden in the night, and if he came near them, there would be a terrible scare if nothing worse.”