Roy saw his opportunity as she started for the door to shut off further questions. "Oh! go away, Aunt Judy, you don't know what morals are," he said, "that's all. In Washington they are government property and they keep'em in tin cans. Of course you didn't see any."
"Dey dun los' de opener t' dat can, too," she remarked, hobbling up the steps. Many and blood-curdling had been her stories of life at the capital. In her opinion, the seat of government had no redeeming qualities. "Stay dar? Why, dis chile wouldn't stay dar fo' no 'mount o' money, ner fer nobody. She's got too much self-'spect fer dat, de good Lawd he do know. Stay dar? No, sah!"
"Well, the others are getting along all right, I'll bet you," piped up Howard, as her foot struck the top step. She turned.
"I ain't gwine ter tell yoh no mo' to-night. I'se gwine ter bed; but wat I knows is des dis: De way dey gets 'long, dey goes t' dat dar Mr. Lawyer an' gits dat money Mos' Grif done lef. De fus' mont' dey sholy dus lib high; de nex' mont' dey sorter scrabbles erlong, an' de las' mont' dey sholy is hawd times. Dey ain't no use talking, dey sholy is dat! Now I'm des' gwine in 'n take a good big jorum of pepsissiway for my stummick, 'n git erlong ter my bed, fore do rasters'gin ter crow fer mawnin'." And she disappeared in the darkness, shaking her head and reiterating the refrain, as to the badness of those twins.
The story of Aunt Judy's travels, in so far as she vouchsafed to tell them and not to resort to fiction or silence—her adventures by land and water, by wagon and rail, in search of "Mos' Grif," spread far and wide. The old woman could not set her foot outside of the door without a following of boys and girls, and, as a faithful historian, it would little avail me to omit, also, of men and of women, who hooted, stared at and otherwise indicated that she was less than human and more than curious. She was the pariah of the village, albeit LeRoy's fists had done their perfect work in that she was no more stoned. But she was content—so, at least, she asserted—and not even the longing for Jeny and Ellen and those badly-spoiled twins (of whom she never tired talking) served to convince her that there could be, on all this green earth, any home for her except, alone, the one that sheltered "Mos' Grif an' Mis' Kath'rine an' dat blessed baby," now grown too large to be a baby longer except alone to this loving old soul, to whom, forever, she was "my baby."
CHAPTER X.
"To thine own self be true." Shakespeare.
There had been a bright side for Griffith in all this change, too. New and warm friends had been made. He had watched with a feeling of joy the enervating influence of slave ownership drop from Beverly's young shoulders—and upon the other boys he felt that it had never cast its blight with a power that would outlast early youth. It filled him with pleasure to find his sons surrounded in the academy and college with the mental atmosphere and influence of freedom, only. He encouraged them to join the debating societies and Greek letter orders which admitted discussion of such topics. Beverly was now in his Sophomore year and was an ardent student of free-soil doctrines. He read and absorbed like a fresh young sponge the political literature of the time. He was always ready and eager to enter the debates of his class upon the ever pregnant and always recurring slavery extension and compromise bills. The young fellows had numerous hot arguments over the position of the different statesmen of the time, and Stephen A. Douglas furnished Beverly with many a hard hour's thinking. Mr. Davenport adhered to Douglas; but Beverly inclined to persistently oppose his point of view. When, at last, Douglas had taken the side of repeal in that famous measure—the Missouri Compromise Bill, which had been at once the hope and the despair of all the great northwest,—Beverly no longer hesitated. He and his father took different sides, finally and forever, in their political opinions. At commencement time, year after year, the governor of the State was made the feature of the college exercises, and he had several times been the guest of Mr. Davenport. This had served to draw to the house many politicians whose talks had given both stimulus and material to Beverly's already ardent political nature, which was so fast leading him outside the bounds reached by his father. The scope and class of his reading often troubled his mother sorely. One day she had gone to Griffith in dismay. It was so seldom that she felt obliged to criticise this eldest son of hers, upon whom she looked with a pride almost beyond words to express, that Griffith was astonished.
"I wish, Griffith, that you would tell Beverly not to read this book. It is the second time I have told him and he is determined. I burned the first copy and he has bought another. He says he will buy fifty if I burn them before he has read it all. He is that determined to read it. I hated to tell you, but———"