"You ought to come down South," the young man suggested. "In that languid air you would doze deliciously!"
"Well, I don't want to be languid," said Miss Birdseye. "Besides, I have been down South, in the old times, and I can't say they let me sleep very much; they were always round after me!"
"Do you mean on account of the negroes?"
"Yes, I couldn't think of anything else then. I carried them the Bible."
Ransom was silent a moment; then he said, in a tone which evidently was carefully considerate, "I should like to hear all about that!"
"Well, fortunately, we are not required now; we are required for something else." And Miss Birdseye looked at him with a wandering, tentative humour, as if he would know what she meant.
"You mean for the other slaves!" he exclaimed, with a laugh. "You can carry them all the Bibles you want."
"I want to carry them the Statute-book; that must be our Bible now."
Ransom found himself liking Miss Birdseye very much, and it was quite without hypocrisy or a tinge too much of the local quality in his speech that he said: "Wherever you go, madam, it will matter little what you carry. You will always carry your goodness."
For a minute she made no response. Then she murmured: "That's the way Olive Chancellor told me you talked."