Cassius only repeated what he had said about the impossibility that he should do much work, as he had always been a bad slave for labour.
At this moment the gong sounded the hour of dinner. The overseer went away. Cassius slowly walked off, as it happened, in the same direction that Alfred was going. When he had reached the shade, the slave looked behind him to see that the overseer was not observing him, and then quickened his pace almost to a run. Alfred tied his horse to a tree, followed him, and reached his provision-ground a very few minutes after him. Cassius was already at work, digging as if he were toiling for wages.
Alfred laughed good-humouredly as he asked Cassius what he said now about the impossibility of his working like other people.
Cassius put on a sullen look while he answered, “You may ask my master, and he will tell you that he has always had trouble with me. When I was a youth, I never liked work, and I have done less and less ever since. I am worth very little to him. I have been whipped five times since last crop, and I got into the stocks many times last year. I eat more than my work pays for.”
“Then I wonder your master keeps you. Don’t you?”
“I wonder he puts such a high ransom upon me. It is too high for such an one as I.”
“And are you working out your ransom, Cassius?”
“I am trying, sir. But I shall have eaten more than it is worth before I get money to pay it.”
“Now,” thought Alfred, “I understand the meaning of this extraordinary humility, and of old Mark’s and Becky’s conceit, too,” he added, as he remembered what had passed in the morning; “they wish to enhance their own value, from a suspicion that they will change masters one of these days; and Cassius depreciates his, because he hopes to get off with a lower ransom. Dreadful! that human beings should rate their own value according to the depth of another man’s purse! They seem, too, to have no idea of natural disinterested kindness; for Mark and Becky took all the merit of my father’s little indulgences to themselves. They seemed to think they must be much better than their neighbour Harry, because my father roofed their cottage after the storm, while Harry was obliged to wait till he could repair his himself. How this world is turned upside down when slaves are in it!”
“Come, Cassius,” he said aloud, “I am not your master, and I am not going to speak to your master about you.”