"If it entered more into the hearts, and disturbed the brains less, it would be better for them and for the slaves."
"Now, come, Miss Emily, I'm tired of hearing you and that boy talk all that nonsense. It's time you were both thinking of something else. You are too old to be indulgin' of him in that ar' stuff. It will never come to any good. Them ar' niggers is allers gwine to be slaves, and white folks had better be tendin' to what consarns 'emselves."
Such arguments as the foregoing were carried on every day. Meanwhile we, who formed the subject of them, still went on in our usual way, half-fed and half-clad, knocked and kicked like dogs.
Amy went about her assigned work, with the same hard-set composure with which she had begun. Talking little to any one, she tried to discharge her duties with a docility and faithfulness very remarkable. Yet she sternly rebuked all conversation. I made many efforts to draw her out into a free, sociable talk, and was always told that it was not agreeable to her.
I now had no companionship among those of my own color. Aunt Polly was in the grave; Amy wrapped in the silence of her own grief; and Sally (the successor of Aunt Polly in the culinary department) was a sulky, ignorant woman, who did not like to be sociable; and the men, with their beastly instincts, were objects of aversion to me. So my days and nights passed in even deeper gloom than I had ever before known.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SUPPER—ITS CONSEQUENCES—LOSS OF SILVER—A LONELY NIGHT—AMY.
The winter was now drawing to a close. The heavy, dreary winter, that had hung like an incubus upon my hours, was fast drawing to an end. Many a little, tuneful bird came chirping with the sunny days of the waning February. Already the sunbeam had begun to give us a hint of the spring-warmth; the ice had melted away, and the moistened roofs of the houses began to smoke with the drying breath of the sun, and little green pods were noticeable upon the dried branches of the forest trees. It was on such a day, when the eye begins to look round upon Nature, and almost expects to solve the wondrous phenomenon of vegetation, that I was engaged arranging Miss Jane's wardrobe. I had just done up some laces for her, and finished off a nice silk morning-dress. She was making extensive preparations for a visit to the city of L. The protracted rigors of the winter and her own fancied ill-health had induced her to postpone the trip until the opening of spring.