“To hurt you? No, honey. But den how can I tell when ole Mars Saten will jes’ rise up an’ try to hurt ole Mela? He may jes’ make me do sumpin’ mean jes’ to spite me for turnin’ my back on him. He jes’ hates Massa Jesus, ole Saten duz, an’ he’s tried to spite me ebery way sense I jine him.
“So you jes’ keep dem keys, Miss Maggie, and if ole Saten tells me to get sumpin’ outen dat stow room to teck to my sister down to Eden Centre, I’ll say:
“‘You jes’ go ’long! I can’t do it nohow, for Miss Maggie done got de keys.’”
Maggie took the keys and tried to keep them after this.
But she told me that many times Aunt Mela had warned her in the same way.
One day she had been tellin’ me a good deal about her trials and labors sence the War, and how she and her sister had worked to get them a little home, and how many times they had been cheated and imposed upon, and made to pay over bills time and agin, owin’ to their ignorance of business.
And I asked her if she thought she wuz any better off now than when she wuz a slave.
She straightened up her tall figure, put her hands on her hips, and looked at me over the top of her glasses.
“Betteh off, you say? You go lay down in de dahk, tied to de floah; if dat floah is cahpeted wid velvet an’ sahten, you’d feel betteh to get up an’ go way out on de sand, or de ston’—you feel free— you holt yur haid up—you breeve long brefs—you are free!”
“But,” sez I, “the floor of slavery wuzn’t covered with velvet, wuz it?”