But Donald slept peacefully on, and Bittertwine sat on his mother’s knee, looking from me to the piccaninny, with big wondering eyes. Every little while he took his mother’s pipe out of her mouth, and put it in his own for a few sucks—smoking Donald’s health, I suppose.
Bittertwine was a wild little nigger boy or “myall,” and terrified of white men, but I don’t think it was the white man’s fault. I fancy his mother used to tell him that the white man would catch him if he were naughty. Just as some white mothers say “the black man” will catch their piccaninnies.
When we called on “Tonald” next morning I found that Sambo was wearing his handkerchief and that his friends had smoked his tobacco.
Topsy was very proud of her piccaninny. “Look, Missus,” she said. “Him close up blackfellow now.” So he was, and a day or two afterwards he was black all over, all excepting the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. These would be a pale grey all his life.
There was a visitor in the camp, quite a civilized blackfellow called Charlie, who was a great authority on christenings, for he had once been in a Catholic Mission School. He told us that when a white piccaninny got a name that “whitefellow chuck em water longa piccaninny.” He had been christened himself once, and water had been “chucked” on him, and he seemed to think he knew all about it. The priests used to tell a great joke about him. Charlie had been taught that he must not eat meat on a Friday, but one Friday he was found with a piece of beef.
“Charlie,” said the priest sternly, “you are eating meat.”
“No more,” said Charlie, seriously. “This one fish alright.”
The priest then said it was very wicked to say what was not true, but Charlie insisted that his beef was fish.