XXXIX.
SAME AFTERNOON
Suez had never seen so busy a winter. Never before in the same number of weeks had so much cotton been hauled into town or shipped from it. Goods had never been so cheap, gross sales so large, or Blackland darkeys and Sandstone crackers so flush.
And naturally the prosperity that worked downward had worked upward all the more. Rosemont had a few more students than in any earlier year; Montrose gave her young ladies better molasses; the white professors in the colored "university," and their wives, looked less starved; and General Halliday, in spite of the fact that he was part owner of a steamboat, had at last dropped the title of "Agent." Even John March had somehow made something.
Barbara, in black, was shopping for Fannie. Johanna was at her side. The day was brisk. Ox-wagons from Clearwater, mule-teams from Blackland, bull-carts from Sandstone, were everywhere. Cotton bales were being tumbled, torn, sampled, and weighed; products of the truck-patch and door-yard, and spoils of the forest, were changing hands. Flakes of cotton blew about under the wheels and among the reclining oxen. In the cold upper blue the buzzards circled, breasted the wind, or turned and scudded down it. From chimney tops the smoke darted hither and yon, and went to shreds in the cedars and evergreen oaks. On one small space of sidewalk which was quiet, Johanna found breath and utterance.
"Umph! dis-yeh town is busy. Look like jess ev'ybody a-makin' money." She got her mistress to read a certain sign for her. "Jawn Mawch, Gen'lemun!—k-he-he!—dass a new kine o' business. An' yit, Miss Barb, I heah Gen'l Halliday tell Miss Fannie 'istiddy dat Mr. Mawch done come out ahade on dem-ah telegraph pole' what de contractors done git sicken' on an' th'ow up. He mus' be pow'ful smart, dat Mr. Mawch; ain't he, Miss Barb?"
"I don't know," murmured Barbara; "anybody can make money when everybody's making it." She bent her gaze into a milliner's window.
The maid eyed her anxiously. There were growing signs that Barbara's shopping was not for the bride-elect only, but for herself also, and for a long journey and a longer absence.
"Miss Barb, yondeh Mr. Mawch. Miss Barb, he de hayn'somess mayn in de three counties!"