With a timid step, I obeyed.
"What are you fit for? Not much of anything, ha?" and catching hold of my ear he pulled me round in front of him, saying,
"Well, you are likely-looking; how much work can you do?"
I stammered out something as to my willingness to do anything that was required of me. He examined my hands, and concluding from their dimensions that I was best suited for house-work, he bade me remain in the kitchen until after breakfast. When I entered the room designated, par politesse, as the kitchen, I was surprised to find such a desolate and destitute-looking place. The apartment, which was very small, seemed to be a sort of Pandora's Box, into which everything of household or domestic use had been crowded. The walls were hung round with saddles, bridles, horse-blankets, &c. Upon a swinging shelf in the centre of the room were ranged all the seeds, nails, ropes, dried elms, and the rest of the thousand and one little notions of domestic economy. A rude, wooden shelf contained a dark, dusty row of unclean tins; broken stools and old kegs were substituted for chairs; upon these were stationed four or five ebony children; one of them, a girl about nine years old, with a dingy face, to which soap and water seemed foreign, and with shaggy, moppy hair, twisted in short, stringy plaits, sat upon a broken keg, with a squalid baby in her lap, which she jostled upon her knee, whilst she sang in a sharp key, "hushy-by-baby." Three other wretched children, in tow-linen dresses, whose brevity of skirts made a sad appeal to the modesty of spectators, were perched round this girl, whom they called Amy. They were furiously begging Aunt Polly (the cook) to give them a piece of hoe-cake.
"Be off wid you, or I'll tell Massa, or de overseer," answered the beldame, as their solicitations became more clamorous. This threat had power to silence the most earnest demands of the stomach, for the fiend of hunger was far less dreaded than the lash of Mr. Jones, the overseer. My entrance, and the sight of a strange face, was a diversion for them. They crowded closer to Amy, and eyed me with a half doubtful, and altogether ludicrous air.
"Who's her?" "whar she come from?" "when her gwyn away?" and such like expressions, escaped them, in stifled tones.
"Come in, set down," said Aunt Polly to me, and, turning to the group of children, she levelled a poker at them.
"Keep still dar, or I'll break your pates wid dis poker."
Instantly they cowered down beside Amy, still peeping over her shoulder, to get a better view of me. With a very uneasy feeling I seated myself upon the broken stool, to which Aunt Polly pointed. One of the boldest of the children came up to me, and, slyly touching my dress, said, "tag," then darted off to her hiding-place, with quite the air of a victress. Amy made queer grimaces at me. Every now and then placing her thumb to her nose, and gyrating her finger towards me, she would drawl out, "you ka-n-t kum it." All this was perfect jargon to me; for at home, though we had been but imperfectly protected by clothing from the vicissitudes of seasons, and though our fare was simple, coarse, and frugal, had we been kindly treated, and our manners trained into something like the softness of humanity. There, as regularly as the Sunday dawned, were we summoned to the house to hear the Bible read, and join (though at a respectful distance) with the family in prayer. But this I subsequently learned was an unusual practice in the neighborhood, and was attributed to the fact, that my master's wife had been born in the State of Massachusetts, where the people were crazy and fanatical enough to believe that "niggers" had souls, and were by God held to be responsible beings.
The loud blast of the horn was the signal for the "hands" to suspend their labor and come to breakfast. Two negro men and three women rushed in at the door, ravenous for their rations. I looked about for the table, but, seeing none, concluded it had yet to be arranged; for at home we always took our meals on a table. I was much surprised to see each one here take a slice of fat bacon and a pone of bread in his or her hand, and eat it standing.