“Oh, Marse Tom, de po’ ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese days; en she’s kinder crippled in de arms en can’t work, en if you could gimme a dollah—on’y jes one little dol—”
Tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was startled into a jump herself.
“A dollar!—give you a dollar! I’ve a notion to strangle you! Is that your errand here? Clear out! and be quick about it!”
Roxy backed slowly toward the door. When she was half-way she stopped, and said mournfully:
“Marse Tom, I nussed you when you was a little baby, en I raised you all by myself tell you was ’most a young man; en now you is young en rich, en I is po’ en gitt’n ole, en I come heah b’lievin’ dat you would he’p de ole mammy ’long down de little road dat’s lef’ ’twix’ her en de grave, en—”
Tom relished this tune less than any that had preceded it, for it began to wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help her, and wasn’t going to do it.
“Ain’t you ever gwine to he’p me, Marse Tom?”
“No! Now go away and don’t bother me any more.”
Roxy’s head was down, in an attitude of humility. But now the fires of her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely. She raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time her great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude, with all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it. She raised her finger and punctuated with it:
“You has said de word. You has had yo’ chance, en you has trompled it under yo’ foot. When you git another one, you’ll git down on yo’ knees en beg for it!”