"Where's YO' mammy?"
It had stirred the Major.
"I am like you, Chad," he had said. "I've got no mammy—no nothin', except Miss Lucy, and she don't live here. I'm afraid she won't be on this earth long. Nobody lives here but me, Chad."
CHAPTER 9.
MARGARET
The Major was in town and Miss Lucy had gone to spend the day with a neighbor; so Chad was left alone.
"Look aroun', Chad, and see how you like things," said the Major. "Go anywhere you please."
And Chad looked around. He went to the barn to see his old mare and the Major's horses, and to the kennels, where the fox-hounds reared against the palings and sniffed at him curiously; he strolled about the quarters, where the little pickaninnies were playing, and out to the fields, where the servants were at work under the overseer, Jerome Conners, a tall, thin man with shrewd eyes, a sour, sullen face, and protruding upper teeth. One of the few smiles that ever came to that face came now when the overseer saw the little mountaineer. By and by Chad got one of the "hands" to let him take hold of the plough and go once around the field, and the boy handled the plough like a veteran, so that the others watched him, and the negro grinned, when he came back, and said
"You sutinly can plough fer a fac'!"