"Oh, come, come, Poll!" said Cripps, "you be still! He an't used to no such ways."
"Still!" said the amiable lady, turning round to him. "You go 'long! Didn't you tell me, if I married you, I should have a nigger to order round, just as I pleased?"
"Well, well," said Cripps, who was not by any means a cruelly-disposed man, "I didn't think you'd want to go walloping him, the first thing."
"I will, if he don't shin round," said the virago, "and you, too!"
And this vigorous profession was further carried out by a vigorous shove, which reacted in Cripps in the form of a cuff, and in a few moments the disgraceful scuffle was at its full height. And Tiff turned in disgust and horror from the house.
"Oh, good Lord!" he said to himself, "we doesn't know what's 'fore us! And I's feeling so bad when de Lord took my poor little man, and now I's ready to go down on my knees to thank de Lord dat he's took him away from de evil to come! To think of my por sweet lamb, Miss Fanny, as I's been bringing up so carful! Lord, dis yer's a heap worse dan de cholera!"
It was with great affliction and dismay that he saw the children coming forward in high spirits, bearing between them a basket of wild-grapes, which they had been gathering. He ran out to meet them.
"Laws, yer por lambs," he said, "yer doesn't know what's a coming on you! Yer pa's gone and married a drefful low white woman, sich as an't fit for no Christian children to speak to. And now dey's quar'ling and fighting in dere, like two heathens! And Miss Nina's dead, and dere an't no place for you to go!"
And the old man sat down and actually wept aloud, while the children, frightened, got into his arms, and nestled close to him for protection, crying too.
"What shall we do? what shall we do?" said Fanny. And Teddy, who always repeated, reverentially, all his sister's words, said, after her, in a deplorable whimper, "What shall we do?"