I stood looking in the direction he had taken for a minute or two, and felt disposed to go after him; but I had seen him get into a temper before, and get out of it again, and I knew that next time we met all this would have passed away from both of us like a cloud.
“No, I won’t go after him,” I said to myself; “it will make him vain and conceited, and he’s bad enough as it is. Poor ole Pomp! Poor lil nigger! What a rum fellow he can be when he likes!”
This little episode had quite carried off the sour feeling from which I had suffered, and I began to look about me, enjoying the beauty of the morning, forgetting all about Pomp, who had, no doubt, I thought, found out a nice sunny spot and gone off to sleep.
Chapter Twenty One.
No one would have thought there had been a flood to have seen the garden and plantation so soon after the waters had gone down; for where the slimy mud had lain in pools, it had cracked all over till it was creased and marked like an alligator’s back, through which cracks the tender green growth soon thrust itself, to spring up at a wondrous rate, as if glad to be fertilised by the soft alluvial soil.
Wherever the mud had lain thick on broad leaf or grass, it had, as I have said, cracked and fallen off, or been washed away by the heavy rains and dews, and our grounds and the country round were as beautiful as ever—more beautiful, I ought to say, for everything was fresher and greener, and where the swamps had been muddy and parched, and overhung with dry growth, all was bright and glorious, with the pools full up, and the water-ways overhung with mossy drapery, glittering and flashing back the sun’s rays wherever the sun pierced the trees.
“Going for a walk, Master George?” said Morgan that morning, as I sauntered down the garden in the hot sunshine, wondering what I should do with myself.
“Yes,” I said, eagerly, for the question had given me the idea I wanted. Yes, I would go for a walk.