It wuz a pretty, cream-colored creeter, so gentle that it would come up to the palin’ and eat little bits that Hester would carry out to it after every meal, with little Ned toddlin’ along by her side; and it wuz one of the baby boy’s choicest rewards for good behavior to be lifted up by the side of the kind-faced creeter and pat the glossy skin with his little fat hands.
This horse seemed to Felix and Hester to be endowed with an almost human intelligence, and come next to little Ned, their only child, in their hearts.
And Hester had herself taken in work and helped to pay for the plain buggy in which she rode out with her boy, and carried Felix to and from his work when he wuz employed some distance from his home.
But no matter how honestly he had earned this added comfort, no matter how hard they had both worked for it and how they enjoyed it—
“It wuz puttin’ on too much damned style for a nigger!”
This wuz Col. Seybert’s decree, echoed by many a low, brutal, envious mind about him, encased in black and white bodies.
And one mornin’, when Hester went out in the bright May sunshine to carry Posy its mornin’ bit of food from the breakfast-table, with little Ned followin’ behind with his bit of sugar for it, the pretty creeter had jest enough strength to drag itself up to its mistress and fix its pitiful eyes on her in helpless appeal, and dropped dead at her feet.
They found the remains of a poisoned cake in the pasture, and on the fence wuz pinned a placard bearin’ the inscription—
“No damned niggers can ride wile wit foaks wak afut—so good buy an’ take warnin’.”
