"Yes, honey."
"How old are you, Juba?" asked Frank.
"I don't know, chile. I's powerful old. Specs I's a hundred."
Ernest smiled.
"No, Juba," he said, "you are not nearly a hundred. You may be sixty."
"All right, massa, you know best."
"Juba, did you ever hear about Uncle Tom?"
"Yes, chile, I knew Uncle Tom," was the unexpected reply. "He was raised on Mr. Jackson's place, next to ours."
Ernest asked some questions about this Uncle Tom, but learned, as he expected, that it was quite a different person from the negro immortalized by Mrs. Stowe.
In looking over Frank's books Ernest found an old copy of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and taking it down, he read some portions, particularly those relating to Topsy.