“Yes, if the poor things had thought of it; but I fully believe that in their trouble and excitement, trying to save life as they were, they did not even give a thought to us.”
Then the flood was set aside with the troubles from the Indians and the Spaniards, my father saying quietly enough that people who came out to an entirely new country must do so bearing in mind that they have to take the risks with the pleasures. Some of which Sarah heard, for she took up the subject next time I saw her alone, and she shook her head at me as she said—
“Yes, my dear, there’s a lot to put up with for those who come to live in new lands, and a couple more of my chickens gone; but I don’t know what you and your poor father would have done if me and Morgan had not made up our minds to come too.”
I’m afraid I was playing the impostor a little, for I said to her, “We couldn’t have got on at all without you, Sarah;” but all the time I was thinking how much more easily we could have managed during the night of peril if we had not had Sarah with us, and how it was in trying to save her that my father nearly lost his life.
But I did not let her see it, and said quietly—
“Lost two more of the chickens?”
“Yes, my dear; and it seems so strange that the birds that could take such care of themselves all through that dreadful flood should be lost now.”
“It does seem strange,” I said, as my thoughts went back to the flood, and I recalled how the fowls took refuge in the pine-trees, and kept going higher and higher as the water rose, hopping calmly enough from branch to branch, and roosting high up at the top, to stop picking about till the flood was sinking, and then slowly descend with the falling waters, to find quite a feast in the mud.
“You don’t think, do you, that those two blacks, Master George—”
“What, like chickens?”