"Found some old bones round the nigger houses; and some on 'em give us some corn-cake."
"Why the devil didn't you send up to my house, and get some bacon? Picking up bones, slop, and swill, round the nigger huts? Why didn't you send up for some ham, and some meal? Lord bless you, you don't think Madam Gordon is a dog to bite you, do you? Wait here till I send you down something fit to eat. Just end in my having to take care of you, I see! And, if you are going to stay here, there will be something to be done to keep the rain out!"
"There, now," he said to Harry, as he was mounting his horse, "just see what 'tis to be made with hooks in one's back, like me! Everybody hangs on to me, of course! Now, there's Durant turns off these folks; there's Peters turns them off! Well, what's the consequence? They come and litter down on me, just because I am an easy, soft-hearted old fool! It's too devilish bad! They breed like rabbits! What God Almighty makes such people for, I don't know! I suppose He does. But there's these poor, miserable trash have children like sixty; and there's folks living in splendid houses, dying for children, and can't have any. If they manage one or two, the scarlet-fever or whooping-cough makes off with 'em. Lord bless me, things go on in a terrible mixed-up way in this world! And, then, what upon earth I'm to say to Mrs. G.! I know what she'll say to me. She'll tell me she told me so—that's what she always says. I wish she'd go and see them herself—I do so! Mrs. G. is the nicest kind of a woman—no mistake about that; but she has an awful deal of energy, that woman! It's dreadful fatiguing to a quiet man, like me—dreadful! But I'm sure I don't know what I should do without her. She'll be down upon me about this woman; but the woman must have some ham, that's flat! Cold potatoes and old bones! Pretty story! Such people have no business to live at all; but, if they will live, they ought to eat Christian things! There goes Jake. Why couldn't he turn 'em off before I saw 'em? It would have saved me all this plague! Dog knew what he was about, when he got me down here! Jake! Oh, Jake, Jake! come here!"
Jake came shambling along up to his master, with an external appearance of the deepest humility, under which was too plainly seen to lurk a facetious air of waggish satisfaction.
"Here, you, Jake; you get a basket"—
"Yes, mas'r!" said Jake, with an air of provoking intelligence.
"Be still saying 'Yes, mas'r,' and hear what I've got to say! Mind yourself!"
Jake gave a side glance of inexpressible drollery at Harry, and then stood like an ebony statue of submission.
"You go to your missis, and ask her for the key of the smoke-house, and bring it to me."