"I don't," said Rowena, "see why you've got so sot on goin' into your hole here, an' pullin' the hole in after you. You hook up ol' Tom, pa, an' me an' you'll go to Texas. I'll start to-morrow morning, pa!"
"I never seen sich a girl," said her mother; "to talk of movin' when prospects is as good f'r you as they be now!"
"Wal, le's stop jourin' at each other," said Rowena, hastily, as if to change the subject. "It ain't the way to treat company."
I discovered that Rowena was about to change her situation in the Blue-grass Manor establishment. She was going into "the Big House" to work under Mrs. Mobley, the wife of the superintendent, or as we called him, the overseer.
"Well, that'll be nice," said I.
"I don't want to," she said. "I like to wait on table better."
"Then why do you change?" said I.
"Mr. Gowdy--," began Ma Fewkes, but was interrupted by her daughter, who talked on until her mother was switched off from her explanation.
"I wun't work with niggers!" said Rowena. "That Pinck has brought a yellow girl here from Dubuque, and she's goin' to wait on the table as she did in Dubuque. They claim they was married the last time he was back there, an' he brought her here. I wun't work with her. I wun't demean myself into a black slave--. But tell me, Jake," coming over and sitting by me, "how you're gittin' along. Off here we don't hear no news from folks over to the Centre at all. We go to the new railroad, an' never see any one from over there--."
"Exceptin' Magnus," said Ma Fewkes.