Bessie on Her Travels

by Joanna H. Mathews

Bessie was very grateful to Duke now, and she too patted and caressed him. He seemed to think himself, that he had performed a great feat, as indeed he had; and kept looking up at his master and thrusting his nose into his hand as if to call for more thanks. Bessie’s attentions he received more coolly, though he permitted them.

“Run up to the house now, you steady little woman,” said Mr. Powers: “your mother is wondering where you can be, though she said you were to be trusted not to get into mischief. It is a good thing to have such a character, Bessie.”

When Duke saw that Bessie and his master were going in different directions, he seemed to be divided in his own mind as to which one he had better accompany. But after looking from one to the other he seemed to decide that Bessie needed his protection, and trotted gravely along by her side till she reached the house, when he turned about and raced after his master.

Bessie went in and told her story, but so simply and with so little fuss that her mother had no idea of the danger she had been in, till Mr. Powers came with Belle and told how she, as well as Belle, had been mercifully preserved from harm that morning.

When Belle came back with her father, she was quite composed, and soon became cheerful again, though she was rather more quiet than usual all the morning.

As soon as the party were rested after their drive, they all went out for a walk about the place. Mr. Powers’ estate was a rice plantation, and the children were greatly interested in going through the mills and seeing how the rice, so familiar to them as an article of food, was prepared for the market. They were particularly so, in watching the husking of the rice. The grain was stored on the second story of the buildings, in great boxes or bins. There was a little sliding-door in each of these, just above the bottom of the bin; and when the men were ready to go to work, a trough was placed leading from that, through a trap-door, to a hopper on the floor below. Then the bin door was opened, and the rice in its brown husks slid through the trough into the hopper beneath, and from thence into the mill, on each side of which stood a man who turned the arms of the mill. In this, the outer husk was stripped from the rice; then it passed through another wide, covered trough, into the sifting or winnowing machine. This was a large box with a wheel at the bottom which turned the rice over and over. As it came to the top, the chaff was blown away by a great “four sided fan,” as Bessie called it, made of four pieces of canvas stretched in different directions, and fixed upon a roller which was turned round by a man, and fanned away the light husks broken from the grain on its passage through the mill. But this was only the outer husk; and it had to go down a third trough into another mill, where the inner covering was taken off; then through a second fanning machine, from which it came out clean and white; and lastly into a third building, where it was led into another range of bins, till it should be necessary to put it into the bags and barrels in which it was sent to market.

Maggie, as usual, wanted to “help;” and the good-natured colored men who were about let her try her hand at just what she chose, provided it was safe for her. Indeed, all the children, even Belle, to whom the amusement was not new, were greatly pleased to pull up the sliding panels of the bins, and see the rice come pouring down into the mill-hopper, and to thrust their hands and arms into the white grain, and shovel it into the bags. So entertained were they with this business, that the older people walked on when they had satisfied their own curiosity, leaving the children in the care of old Cato, who promised to see that they came to no harm.

“We’ve done a whole lot of work, Mr. Powers,” said Maggie, when they were called back to the house to dinner. “I think your men must be pretty glad we came.”

“Yes,” said Lily: “we’ve most filled two bags and a barrel.”

“And we didn’t spill very much either,” said Bessie, who was at that moment laboring away with a wooden shovel, on which she contrived to take up about two table-spoonsful of rice.