This being as good as a promise, wily Patsy accepted it as such and said no more on the subject. Added discussion of it might result in a change of mind on her aunt’s part.
Reaching the house, however, a most unpleasant surprise lay in wait for the party. To see Mammy Luce standing in the entrance to the patio was not an unusual sight. To see her stationed there, however, her bulky form swathed in an ancient linen duster, a shapeless black hat, decorated with a depressed-looking ostrich plume jammed down upon her gray wool, was another matter. More, in one hand was a section of a turkey red tablecloth, tied together at the four corners and bulging with her personal belongings. In the other hand she held a green cotton umbrella which she raised in a kind of fantastic salute as the Wayfarers approached the entrance.
“I’se gwine away fum here, I is,” she rumbled. “I ain’t gwine stay in no house where sperrits come sneakin’ aroun’. I done seen one this mawnin’.”
“What does this mean, Mammy Luce?” Miss Martha took majestic command of the situation. “You have no right to leave me like this without giving notice. Now tell me exactly what the trouble is.”
“I done tell yoh a’ready, Missis. I done seen a sperrit. I wuz bakin’ a cake, I wuz, in de kitchen. I done looks up from de oben an’ I seen a long, tall, ole white sperrit a-sneakin’ for de back stairs. I near fell daid, I did. When I come to, I wuz shakin’ like a leaf. So I jes’ put mah traps togedder quick an’ now I’se gwine. I’se been awaitin’ to tell yoh an ax yoh fer mah wages.”
“There are no such things as ‘spirits,’ Mammy Luce,” Miss Carroll informed the frightened servant. “You only thought you saw one.”
Alarmed at the prospect of losing an excellent cook, Miss Martha proceeded to do her utmost to convince the old woman that her visitant, provided she really had seen an apparition, was not supernatural.
“I seen it. I ain’t blind. I seen it,” Mammy Luce doggedly reiterated. “Yoh cain’t tell this niggah it wuzn’t no sperrit, ’cause it wuz.”
“Much more likely it was one of the maids who dressed up in a sheet on purpose to frighten you,” was Miss Martha’s practical view of the matter. “Where are Celia and Emily?”