"Why not, if you told her to?" said Aunt Maria, who had also descended to the veranda.
"Why not?—Just because, as she would say, she hadn't laid out to do it."
"That's not the way my servants are taught to do!" said Aunt Maria.
"I'll warrant not," said Nina. "But yours and mine are quite different affairs, aunt. They all do as they have a mind to, in my 'diggings.' All I stipulated for is a little of the same privilege."
"That man's wife and children have come and 'squatted' down on my place," said Mr. Gordon, laughing; "and so, Nin, all you paid for his fish is just so much saving to me."
"Yes, to be sure! Mr. Gordon is just one of those men that will have a tribe of shiftless hangers on at his heels!" said Mrs. Gordon.
"Well, bless my soul! what's a fellow to do? Can't see the poor heathen starve, can we? If society could only be organized over, now, there would be hope for them. The brain ought to control the hands; but among us the hands try to set up for themselves;—and see what comes of it!"
"Who do you mean by brain?" said Nina.
"Who?—Why, we upper crust, to be sure! We educated people! We ought to have an absolute sway over the working classes, just as the brain rules the hand. It must come to that, at last—no other arrangement is possible. The white working classes can't take care of themselves, and must be put into a condition for us to take care of them. What is liberty to them?—Only a name—liberty to be hungry and naked, that's all. It's the strangest thing in the world, how people stick to names! I suppose that fellow, up there, would flare up terribly at being put in with my niggers; and yet he and his children are glad of the crumbs that fall from their table! It's astonishing to me how, with such examples before them, any decent man can be so stone blind as to run a tilt against slavery. Just compare the free working classes with our slaves! Dear me! the blindness of people in this world! It's too much for my patience, particularly in hot weather!" said Mr. John, wiping his face with a white pocket-handkerchief.
"Well, but, Uncle John," said Nina, "my dear old gentleman, you haven't travelled, as I have."