“And if I should fall down stairs, or into the Salkahatchie, you will know the primal reason for it.”
Old Nelse shook his head at such frivolity.
“Jes’ ’cause you all ain’t afraid don’t take yo’ no further off danger,” he said, soberly. Then he followed Evilena to the kitchen, where his entrance was greeted with considerable respect. When Nelse appeared at Loringwood in his finest it was a sort of state affair in the cook house. He was an honored guest with the grown folks, because the grandeurs he had witnessed and could tell of, and he was a cause of dread to the pickaninnies who were often threatened with banishment to the Unc. Nelse glade, and they firmly believed he immediately sold all the little darkies who put foot in his domain.
“Isn’t he delightfully quaint?” asked the girl, rejoining Delaven. “Gertrude never does seem to find him interesting; but I do. She has been used to him always, of course, and I haven’t, and she thinks it was awful for him to sell Cynthia, just because she got religion and would not behave. Now, I think it’s funny; don’t you?”
“Your historian has given me so many side-lights on slavery that I’m dazzled with the brilliancy of them; whether serious or amusing, it is astonishing.”
“Only to strangers,” said the girl; “to us they are never puzzling; they are only grown-up children––even the wisest––and need to be managed like children. Those crazy abolitionists should hear Nelse on the ‘hoodoo’ of freedom; I fancy he would astonish them.”
“Not the slightest doubt of it,” agreed Delaven, who usually did agree with Evilena––except when argument would prolong a tete-a-tete.