“Yassah, right away, sah!”
“And Alfred, not a word to a living soul of this.”
“No, sah, cose not Marse John—I know how tis ’my sef’—de course er true love ain’t run smooth wid me nuther.”
“Quick, now, don’t you lose a minute.”
John returned to his office to await with impatience the word that would mean the beginning of a new chapter in his life.
Alfred placed the note carefully under his hat and hastened to the Judge’s, laughing and chuckling to himself.
For reasons best known to himself he entered by the carriage way.
At the wide double gate still stood the old lodge-keeper’s cottage, a relic of the slave regime. In the cottage Aunt Julie Ann lived with Uncle Isaac, her latest husband. Alfred had once been honoured with that relationship before the war, but Isaac had whipped him and taken Aunt Julie Ann by force of arms.
Alfred was much the larger man of the two, tall, awkward and slow of movement, while Isaac was small and active as a cat. The agility of his movements had swept Aunt Julie Ann’s imagination by storm. The contrast to her own three hundred pounds had no doubt been the secret charm.
She had loudly professed her love for Alfred until she saw Isaac thrash him, and without a word she surrendered to the new lord and refused to recognise her former husband.