She said he had to hurry home on account of business. He had come in to the village, to get some money. There was goin' to be a lot of men, wimmen, and children sold in his neighborhood the next mornin', and he thought he should buy a girl, if he could find a likely one.
“Sold?” says I, in curious axents.
“Yes,” says Sally. “They sell the inmates of the poor-house, every year, to the highest bidder,—sell their labor by the year. They have 'em get up on a auction block, and hire a auctioneer, and sell 'em at so much a head, to the crowd. Why, some of 'em bring as high as twenty dollars a year, besides board.
“Sometimes, he said, there was quite a run on old wimmen, and another year on young ones. He didn't know but he might buy a old woman. He said there was an old woman that he thought there was a good deal of work in, yet. She had belonged to one of the first families in the State, and had come down to poverty late in life, through the death of some of her relations, and the villany of others. So he thought she had more strength in her than if she had always been worked. He thought, if she didn't fetch too big a price, he should buy her instead of a young one. They was so balky, he said, young ones was, and would need more to eat, bein' growin'. And she could do rough, heavy work, just as well as a younger one, and probably wouldn't complain so much; and he thought she would last a year, anyway. It was his way, he said, to put 'em right through, and, when one wore out, get another one.”
I sithed; and says I, “I feel to lament that I wuzn't here so's he could have converted me.” Says I, “A race of bein's, that make such laws as these, hadn't ort to be disturbed by wimmen meddlin' with 'em.”
“Yes: that is what he said,” says Sally, in a innocent way.
I didn't say no more. Good land! Sally hain't to blame. But with a noble scorn filling my eye, and floating out the strings of my head-dress, I moved off to bed.