Nobody, not even she, guessed how the lad’s heart was thumping with the effort to conceal his embarrassment, but when a tinge of color spread on each side of his set mouth and his eyes began to waver uncertainly, Mrs. Willoughby’s intuition was quick and kind.
“Barbara,” she asked, “have you shown your cousin your ponies?”
The little girl saw her motive and laughed merrily:
“Why, I haven’t had time to show him anything. Come on, cousin.”
The boy followed her down the steps in his noiseless moccasins, along a grass path between hedges of ancient box, around an ell, and past the kitchen and toward the stables. In and behind the kitchen negroes of all ages and both sexes were hurrying or lazing around, and each turned to stare wonderingly after the strange woodland figure of the little hunter. Negroes were coming in from the fields with horses and mules, negroes were chopping and carrying wood, there were negroes everywhere, and the lad had never seen one before, but he showed no surprise. At a gate the little girl called imperiously:
“Ephraim, bring out my ponies!”
And in a moment out came a sturdy little slave whose head was all black skin, black wool, and white teeth, leading two creamy-white little horses that shook the lad’s composure at last, for he knew ponies as far back as he could remember, but he had never seen the like of them. His hand almost trembled when he ran it over their sleek coats, and unconsciously he dropped into his Indian speech and did not know it until the girl asked laughingly:
“Why, what are you saying to my ponies?”
And he blushed, for the little girl’s artless prattling and friendliness were already beginning to make him quite human.
“That’s Injun talk.”