I called, “Hi! hi!”
The low crooning stopped, the hum of the spinning-wheel ceased. The negro woman who had held the lamp appeared in the doorway. “How you find yo’self dis mawning?” she asked. And then in a lingo which at this distance of time I do not pretend to reproduce correctly, she asked me what I would take to eat.
“There’s nothing I could not eat,” I said.
She showed her teeth in a wide smile. “Marse mighty big man, dis mawning,” she answered. “He sorter lam-like yistiddy. He mo’ like one er de chilluns yistiddy. W’at you gwine ter eat?”
“Breakfast first!” I said. “Some tea, please—”
She shook her head violently. “Hole on dar,” she said. “I ’ear Ma’am Constantia say der ain’t no tea fer Britishers! De last drap er dat tea bin gone sunk in Cooper River!”
“Oh!” I replied, a good deal taken aback. Confound Madam Constantia’s impudence! “Then I will have what you will give me. Only let me have it soon.”
“Marse mighty big man dis mawning,” the woman said mischievously. “He’low he’ll eat de last mossel der is. Yis’dy he mo’ like one er de chilluns.”
Well, I had the last morsel—without tea; while Mammy Jacks stood over me with her yellow kerchief and her good-natured grinning black face. “Who’s Madam Constantia?” I asked after a time.
“W’at I tole you,” the woman replied with dignity, “She, Ma’am Constantia ter cullud folks. She, missie ter me.”