When Uncle Phin inquired, with an air of well-feigned interest, if those were her children, Aunt Charity paused in her work for a moment, and, standing with arms akimbo, regarded them with great complacency, as she answered: “No, Misto Phin Dale, deys not my ownly chillun; but deys my gran’chillun, once remobed. You see deir maw, she my ole man’s fustes wife’s gal, by her fustes husban’. So when dey came to be twins an’ orfuns at de same time, I wuz deir nex ob kin, an dey nacherly fell to my sheer ob de estate. Now, I’se gwine gib ’em a eddicashun, and train ’em up fer de whitewash an kalsermine bizness.”
Warm and dry, strengthened and refreshed by their supper, of which little Rusty had eaten his full share and would now have greatly preferred lying under the stove to going out into the stormy night, our travellers again set forth on their journey. Had Aunt Charity’s mite of a house afforded a spare room she would have invited them to occupy it until morning; but it did not, and she had no place to offer them. Then, too, Uncle Phin was most anxious to start at once, now that they had money, in hopes that it would last until they reached their journey’s end. So interested had Aunt Charity become in the young lad who was so bravely seeking a distant home in place of the one where he had been cruelly and unjustly treated—for Uncle Phin had told her the whole of Arthur’s history,—that she at first refused to receive any pay for their supper. Both Arthur and Uncle Phin insisted so strongly that she should, that at length she consented to take twenty-five cents, but no more. She also forced into Uncle Phin’s hands a paper bag full of rolls and cakes for Arthur just as they left, and stood in the doorway watching them until they were lost to sight in the shadows of the dimly lighted street.
Aunt Charity had given them directions for reaching the railway station, so that they had no trouble in finding it. Here they were quickly bewildered by the hurrying throngs of people and great trucks of baggage that were being trundled up and down the platform, the puffing and snorting of engines, and the dazzling white light of the electric lamps.
At last Uncle Phin ventured to address a man in a cap and blue coat, whom he took to be one of the railway officials.
“Please, sah,” said the old man, bowing humbly and pulling at the brim of his tattered hat, “which ob de kyars is er gwine to Ferginny?”
“Which way are you bound?” asked the official, sharply. “East or west?”
Uncle Phin did not know.
“Let me see your tickets?”
Uncle Phin had none. “De man haint passen ob ’em roun yet,” he said.
“Are you going to Richmond, Virginia?”