“I d’no, missy.”
“If you will go I will give you the books you will want. Will you go if I will get them for you?”
“Yes, missy.”
A most unblushin’ falsehood, as I learned afterwards. For she sold the books as soon as I gave them to her at the little store at the Corners, sold them for a string of yellow glass beads and a cheap cotton lace collar.
And when I taxed her with this, she denied it at once.
And when I told her that I saw the books at the store myself, she said she had lost the books on her way to school, and the beads and collar had been given her.
“’Fore de Lawd dey had.”
What could any one do with such ignorance, and falsehood, and utter lack of principle?
And as Maggie said, “The South is overrun with just such characters as these.”
Not all of them about there wuz so, she said, not by any means; some of them wuz earnest Christians, good scholars, good inhabitants.