“Oh, it’s all right enough, sir, what I tell you,” said Morgan; “and seems to me they’re right, so long as they treat ’em well. Here’s lots of land wants clearing and planting, and one pair of hands can’t do it, of course, and there’s no men to be hired out here, so the gentlemen have been buying slaves.”
“What a shame!” I cried. “How would you like to be bought for a slave?”
Morgan looked at me, then at the sky, then down at the ground; then away straight before him, as he took off his hat and scratched one ear.
“Humph!” he ejaculated, suddenly; “that’s a puzzler, Master George. Do you know I never thought of that.”
“It seems to me horribly cruel.”
“But then, you see, Master George, they’re blacks, and that makes all the difference.”
I could not see it, but I did not say so, and by degrees other things took my attention. There was so much to see, and hear, and do, that I forgot all about Indians and blacks; or if they did come to mind at all as time went on, I merely gave them a passing thought, and went off to talk to Morgan, to set a trap, to fish, or to watch the beautiful birds that came into the sunny clearing about my home.