“Isn’t it most time for Uncle Phil to start?” asked Alice, when Dinah had finished fixing the room.
“Yes, high time,” answered Dinah, “but Phil is so slow. I’ll jest hurry him up,” and followed by Alice she descended the stairs, meeting in the lower hall with Lyd, who held in her hand a brown envelope, which she passed to Alice, saying “One dem letters what come like lightnin’ on the telegraph. A boy done brung it.”
“A telegram,” cried Alice, feeling at first alarmed. “Go for Mrs. Warren to read it.”
But the overseer’s wife was absent, as was also her husband, and neither the blacks nor Alice knew what to do.
“There isn’t more than a line and a half,” said Alice, passing her finger over the paper and feeling the thick sand which had been sifted upon it. “I presume something has detained Frederic, and he has sent word that he will not be here to-day.”
“Let me see dat ar,” said Phil, who liked to impress his companions with a sense of his superior wisdom, and, adjusting his iron-bowed specs, he took the letter, which in reality was Greek to him.
After an immense amount of wry faces and loud whispering he said:
“Yes, honey, you’re correct, though Marster Frederic has sich an onery hand-write that it takes me a a heap of time to make it out. It reads, ‘Somethin’ has detained Frederic, and he has sent word that he’ll be here to-morry.’” And, with the utmost gravity, Phil took off his specs, and was walking away with the air of one who has done something his companions could never hope to do, when Hetty called out:
“Wonder if he ’spects us to swaller dat ar, and think he kin read, when he jest done said over what Miss Alice say. Can’t fool dis chile.”
This insinuation Uncle Phil felt constrained to answer, and with an injured air he replied: