"Sit down, Carolina, and don't get so excited. Of course she was his mother. That's the way coloured women do. It saves talking,--which seems to do no good. I've seen old Aunt 'Polyte, in your father's time at Guildford, come creeping around the corner of her cabin to see if her children were obeying her, and, if she found that they were not, I've seen her knock all ten of them down,--some fully six feet away. And such yells!"
"Did grandfather allow it?" demanded Carolina, with blazing eyes.
"I can fairly see him now, sitting his horse Splendour, draw rein and shake with silent laughter, till he had to take his pipe out of his mouth. It was too common a sight to make a fuss about. Besides, they needed it. Of all the mischievous, obstinate, thick-headed little donkeys you ever saw, commend me to a raft of black children,--Aunt 'Polyte's in particular. Coloured women are nearly always inhuman on the surface to their own children."
"Wasn't Aunt 'Polyte my father's black mammy? Wasn't she kind to the white children in her charge?"
"Ah, that was a different matter. Kind? 'Polyte would have let all her own children die to save your father one ache. I remember when her children got the measles, she locked them all in the cabin, and sent her sister to feed them at night, while she stayed in the big house and kept her white children from contagion. Fortunately, none of her own died, but, if they had, it wouldn't have changed her idea of her duty."
"What was there queer about Aunt 'Polyte? I remember that daddy told me once, but I have forgotten."
"She had one blue eye and one biack one, and not one of her children inherited her peculiarity except her youngest child,--a boy,--born when she was what would be called an old woman. I know she thought it was a bad omen to have a child after she was fifty, and, when she saw his blue eye, she said he was marked for bad luck."
"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Carolina. "Cousin Lois, you know enough about Christian Science to know that she made a law for that child which may have ruined him for life."
"Yes, I suppose she did. But, Carolina, dear, don't get your hopes of the South up too high. I am afraid it won't come up to your expectations."
Carolina smiled, sighed, and shook her head.