"Tiff, what the durned are you howling about?"
Tiff got up in a moment, and, swallowing down his grief and his tears, pointed indignantly to the still figure on the bed.
"Dar! dar! Wouldn't b'lieve her last night! Now what you think of dat ar? See how you look now! Good Shepherd hearn you abusing de poor lamb, and he's done took her whar you'll never see her again!"
Cripps had, like coarse, animal men generally, a stupid and senseless horror of death;—he recoiled from the lifeless form, and sprang from the bed with an expression of horror.
"Well, now, who would have thought it?" he said. "That I should be in bed with a corpse! I hadn't the least idea!"
"No, dat's plain enough, you didn't! You'll believe it now, won't you? Poor little lamb, lying here suffering all alone! I tell you, when folks have been sick so long, dey has to die to make folks believe anything ails 'em!"
"Well, really," said Cripps, "this is really—why, it an't comfortable! darned if it is! Why, I'm sorry about the gal! I meant to steam her up, or done something with her. What's we to do now?"
"Pretty likely you don't know! Folks like you, dat never tends to nothing good, is always flustered when de Master knocks at de do'! I knows what to do, though. I's boun' to get up de crittur, and go up to de old plantation, and bring down a woman and do something for her, kind of decent. You mind the chil'en till I come back."
Tiff took down and drew on over his outer garment a coarse, light, woollen coat, with very long skirts and large buttons, in which he always arrayed himself in cases of special solemnity. Stopping at the door before he went out, he looked over Cripps from head to foot, with an air of patronizing and half-pitiful contempt, and delivered himself as follows:
"Now, mas'r, I's gwine up, and will be back quick as possible; and now do pray be decent, and let dat ar whiskey alone for one day in your life, and 'member death, judgment, and 'ternity. Just act, now, as if you'd got a streak of something in you, such as a man ought for to have who is married to one of de very fustest families in old Virginny. 'Flect, now, on your latter end; may be will do your poor old soul some good; and don't you go for to waking up the chil'en before I gets back. They'll learn de trouble soon enough."