Such trips seemed always fresh, and when I returned there was the delightful old home in which my father had elected to end his days; and I picture one of those scenes outside the embowered house with its broad veranda, and the pretty cottages a couple of hundred yards away beyond the noble garden, Morgan’s pride. The home was simple still, for my father did not increase his establishment, save that a couple of young black girls elected to come from the settlement to place themselves under old Sarah’s management.
I should not have mentioned this but for one little incident which took place two years after.
I had been in England for a long stay, and at the termination of my visit I had taken passage, landed at the settlement, made a hasty call on two old friends, and then walked across to my father’s, where, after my warm welcome from within doors, including a kiss from our Sarah for the great swarthy man she always would call “My dear boy,” I went out to have my hand crunched by grey-headed old Morgan, and to grasp old Hannibal’s broad palm as well.
“Why, where’s Pomp?” I said.
“Him heah, Mass’ George,” was shouted from the direction of one of the cottages. “I come, sah, but she juss like ’tupid lil nigger. Come ’long, will you; Mass’ George won’t eat you.”
I opened my eyes a little as I recognised in the smart, pleasant-looking black girl by his side, Salome, one of the maids I had seen at the cottage before I sailed for Europe.
“Why, Pomp,” I said, laughing, “what does this mean?”
“Dab juss what I tell her, Mass’ George,” he cried. “I know you be quite please, on’y she all ashame and foolis like.”
“But, Pomp, my good fellow, you don’t mean—”
“Oh yes, I do, Mass’ George; and I know you be dreffle glad—dat my wife.”