Nina's nature was so vehement and imperious, when excited, that it was a disagreeable fatigue to cross her. Mrs. Nesbit, therefore, made amends by bemoaning herself as we have seen. Nina started up, hastily, on seeing her pony brought round to the door; and, soon arrayed in her riding-dress, she was cantering through the pine woods in high spirits. The day was clear and beautiful. The floor of the woodland path was paved with a thick and cleanly carpet of the fallen pine-leaves. And Harry was in attendance with her, mounted on another horse, and riding but a very little behind; not so much so but what his mistress could, if she would, keep up a conversation with him.
"You know this Old Tiff, Harry?"
"Oh, yes, very well. A very good, excellent creature, and very much the superior of his master, in most respects."
"Well, he says his mistress came of a good family."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Harry. "She always had a delicate appearance, very different from people in their circumstances generally. The children, too, are remarkably pretty, well-behaved children; and it's a pity they couldn't be taught something, and not grow up and go on these miserable ways of these poor whites!"
"Why don't anybody ever teach them?" said Nina.
"Well, Miss Nina, you know how it is: everybody has his own work and business to attend to—there are no schools for them to go to—there's no work for them to do. In fact, there don't seem to be any place for them in society. Boys generally grow up to drink and swear. And, as for girls, they are of not much account. So it goes on from generation to generation."
"This is so strange, and so different from what it is in the northern states! Why, all the children go to school there—the very poorest people's children! Why, a great many of the first men, there, were poor children! Why can't there be some such thing here?"
"Oh, because people are settled in such a scattering way they can't have schools. All the land that's good for any thing is taken up for large estates. And, then, these poor folks that are scattered up and down in between, it's nobody's business to attend to them, and they can't attend to themselves; and so they grow up, and nobody knows how they live, and everybody seems to think it a pity they are in the world. I've seen those sometimes that would be glad to do something, if they could find anything to do. Planters don't want them on their places—they'd rather have their own servants. If one of them wants to be a blacksmith, or a carpenter, there's no encouragement. Most of the large estates have their own carpenters and blacksmiths. And there's nothing for them to do, unless it is keeping dogs to hunt negroes; or these little low stores where they sell whiskey, and take what's stolen from the plantations. Sometimes a smart one gets a place as overseer on a plantation. Why, I've heard of their coming so low as actually to sell their children to traders, to get a bit of bread."