“Missus! Missus!” she shouted, “Topsy bin catch newfellow piccaninny boy, Topsy bin catch newfellow piccaninny boy,” and she sank down in a little breathless heap beside me.
Fast on her heels came some of the camp lubras bringing me an invitation to the christening party.
“You eye,” they gasped, “him bin catch him alright,” and then they told me that Topsy, Sambo’s lubra, wanted me to come and see it, and christen it with a white man’s name. “Topsy bin talk, spose Missus come on, give piccaninny whitefellow name.”
Of course I went at once, taking a good supply of “chewbac” and a big red handkerchief, for we did not have a christening every day. Besides, I was curious to see this baby, for I had not yet seen a very tiny piccaninny.
Sambo met us at the creek, grinning widely with delight. We gave the proud father a new pipe and some “chewbac,” and he tried hard to grin a little wider in thanks, but found that even a blackfellow’s grin has its limits. Topsy was sitting among the lubras, and looked round when she heard us approaching, On her knee was her eldest son “Bittertwine,” a chubby little rascal about two years old. Beside her lay a coolamun, nearly filled with fresh green leaves and grass. As I came nearer she lifted up some of the leaves and showed me the tiniest, tiniest atom of a baby lying sound asleep; cool, and safe from flies, in its pretty leafy cradle.
I stood for some minutes, too astonished to speak, for instead of the shiny jet-black piccaninny I had expected, I found one just about the colour of honey.
“What name, Topsy?” I asked at last. “Him close up whitefellow, I think.”
“No more, Missus,” she answered, touching the little sleeping baby lovingly. “Him blackfellow alright. Look, Missus, him blackfellow alright,” she added, showing me one thin jet-black line running right round the mouth and others round the eyes and nails.
Then the lubras all joined in, and explained that a little black baby when it is first born, is always of a very light golden brown but with thin black lines, just as this baby had. They said that steadily and surely these lines would widen and spread till in a few days he would be like all other shiny black piccaninnies.
“All day likee that, Missus,” they assured me in chorus, so I put a handful of tobacco in the baby’s cradle, and spread a big red handkerchief on top. I said he was a man baby and Mr. Thunder Debbil-debbil would be delighted to see he had a nice red handkerchief. The lubras laughed merrily at this, and the old men smiled on the Missus with approval.