That night there came a letter to Kenneth from Harry and, at Connie’s request, he began to read it aloud. Harry was much elated with his visit, and was having “a jam up good time,” he wrote, whereupon Connie, according to her habit, asked what “a jam up good time” was, and if it were like what she was having. She was promptly silenced by her aunt, and Kenneth read on, seeing far ahead, and skipping here and there when he came upon dangerous grounds for strangers’ ears. Connie was listening with rapt attention, and a growing interest in the boy who was in clover and his native element, among swells.
“What is clover? And what are swells?” Connie asked, but her auntie told her to hush, and that both terms were slang.
Then Kenneth continued reading in substance that Hal didn’t get up till nine or ten o’clock, unless he chose, and that “a fire was made in his room every morning by a nigger, which was O.K.”
Connie opened her lips to ask what “O.K.” meant, but her aunt shook her head, and she jotted it down in her mind to be hunted for in the dictionary later on, with “jam up!”
Harry went out to ride or drive every day, he said, with Tom, and when on horseback a “nigger” went with them to open the gates if their road was through the pastures. He had been to Versailles and Frankfort, and many times to Lexington, as Cedar Bank was near there. He had also been out into the country to Morrisford on the river, named for his ancestors, who used to live there, and where his father was born.
“It isn’t any great,” he wrote; “not half as fine as Morris Place at The 4 Corners must have been, and shall be again, if I live; but fine places here don’t count as they do with us. It is blood, and I’ve got a lot of it on father’s side. Why, when he was a boy, before the war, the Morrises had shot one or two people in a quarrel and had a hundred niggers! Think of it! and a few of the old ones are still living round there in log cabins, working some and stealing more, folks say. There’s an old auntie,—Aunt Polly,—who looks like a mummy. She was owned by my grandfather Morris. He was a colonel. I didn’t know that till I came here. In fact, I didn’t know what good stock I sprang from, and, I tell you, I feel proud that I am a Morris. Aunt Polly was my father’s nurse, and when they told her who I was she nearly strangled me with her black, skinny arms. Called me Mas’r Harry; said she was ‘Mas’r Charles’ ole mammy, and nussed him from a baby.’ I tell you, I felt big, with Tom Haynes standing by and hearing it all. There were more darkies in the Aunt Polly line, who came pressing up, with their ‘How dy’s,’ and ‘God bless you, mas’r,’ and ‘Has you a bit of backy?’ This was from a baboon, who might have been a hundred, and who claimed to be a Morris ‘bawn and raised on de ole plantation befo’ de wah,’ in which he said he took a part,—on which side I didn’t ask or care. As true as you live, I began to have a fellow feeling of relationship to these niggers, and feed every mother’s son of them. Tom said it was the right thing to do, and as I didn’t want to seem mean, I gave out right and left till I had only fifty cents left in my pocket, and, Ken, I must have some more by hook or by crook——”
Here Kenneth, who saw breakers ahead, broke down with a cough, while Connie chimed in, “What is ‘by hook or by crook’?”
“More slang,” her aunt whispered to her, and Connie put it down in her mind to be hunted up with “O.K.”
As Kenneth continued to cough, Mrs. Hart felt sure that the rest of the letter was not for strangers’ ears, and left the room, taking Connie with her.
“I don’t believe I ought to have read as much as I did,” Kenneth said, when Mrs. Hart was gone, “but Connie wanted to hear it, and I got at it and couldn’t very well stop. I did skip some, but hear what he says: