"My father trades with the Dutch merchants, who bring all sorts of curious plants from the Indies," said Katherine. "That is the way we got our cat and Sambo."
"Father bought Sambo from a man who treated him cruelly," added Avice. "When he first came here he was a heathen, but my aunt has taught him better, and now he can say his paternoster and creed in English. We all like him because he is so droll and so kind. My Lord Cardinal wanted him for a fool, but my father would not give him up."
"I never saw a black man before," said I. "I did not know there were such things, and when I first saw him I thought it was the evil one himself."
"Some of our neighbors believe he is not quite right," observed Katherine, "but he is as good a Christian as any one."
"Better than some, because he is grateful!" said Avice. "Come, now, and we will show you the last new tree our father got from foreign parts. There is not another in the country, and we are in a great hurry to have it bloom, that we may see what the flowers are like."
I duly admired the foreign tree, or shrub, which had thick, glossy loaves, and on which the flower buds were just forming, and then, Turk appearing and putting in a claim for notice, we had a great frolic with him, and found him an excellent playfellow, as my uncle had said.
When we went into the house, my aunt called me up stairs and showed me my clothes neatly arranged in a press, while a small blue bed, like my cousins', was being put up for me in the light closet I have mentioned.
"This will be your room as long as you stay here," said she. "Let me see that you keep it neat and orderly, as a young maid should."
I courtesied, and said I would do my best. The little room was very pretty, and even luxurious, in my eyes. There were no rushes on the floor, such as I had been used to seeing—and I now perceived, for the first time, what it was that made the floors all over the house seem so strange and bare to me.
"That is one of my nephew's new-fangled ways, as old Dame Madge calls them," pursued my aunt. "He learned it in Holland among the Dutch, who are the cleanest folks in the world."