"I saw some little black fellows rolling something of the kind back of the stables this morning. Lucy, go hunt them up, and have the cover found. Is such a trifle sufficient to drive you into a passion, in which you accuse and punish an innocent person wrongfully?"
"I repeat to you, Mr. Lisle, that I shall do as I please with my own servants, and yours too, as you will find, and have found, I should think. Moreover, I am not going to be lectured by you as if I were a child"—Mrs. Lisle flung herself out of the room, to vent her bad humor upon whatever ill-starred persons should cross her path.
To do justice to Mrs. Lisle, she had intended to have sold both Kizzie and her son to the same buyer. As she herself said, she was always having trouble with Kizzie. There were times when she was positively afraid of her. Just before the proposed sale she had had a serious difficulty with her. Mistress and servant regarded each other as two enraged tigers might do, whenever they met. Mrs. Lisle made up her mind she would have Kizzie taken to the Court House and sold. Court was to be holden in a week or so; at such a time more or less slaves were put up at auction.
Kizzie was not sorry when informed of the proposed plan; though she shared, with others of her class, a horror of being "sold South," she had come to think she could not possibly fall into more cruel hands. Besides, in that region so terrible to the imagination of the slaves, she might come across one or all of her lost sons! At any rate, she would be beneath the same sky, and the dear hope of meeting them would be a continual comfort.
A whole day was consumed by Tippy—her real name was Xantippe—in plucking out Aunt Kizzie's grey hairs, and in fixing her up to appear to the best advantage for youth and sprightliness. She was only sixty, but hard labor and severe usage had told upon her heavily.
Aunt Kizzie, in her new linsey-woolsey and shining bandana as a turban, started off in great glee for the Court House. That she might appear there fresh, brisk, and pert, she was not suffered to walk, but Washington, the coachman, was ordered to drive her in the ark of the plantation wagon. Joe, smart, smiling, and newly-equipped in clothes, sat by her side, scarcely knowing whether he had best share in his mother's uncommon gaiety, or yield to his own anxious misgiving.
Another thing contributed to Aunt Kizzie's happiness. All the way to the Court House she was at perfect liberty to caress her nosegay of pinks and camomile. Kizzie had two grand passions; one was for her children, the other for her fragrant pinks. If she was allowed a garden patch the size of a hat-crown, it was devoted to her favorite flowers. She was wont to have her loom festooned with them; she drank in their perfume as did her web its woof; by night she had them scattered over her pillow, that, even in sleep, she might not lose their presence.
"I should think pinks would grow out of her nose," the servants were in the habit of remarking. It really often looked like they did, for, morning and evening, at her milking, her nose, instead of her hand, served as bouquet-holder.
Over the rough roads then, from Thornton Hall to the Court House, her attention was devoted to Joe and her pinks. She was to be sold—that was true—but then she had left a hated mistress. She had with her all she loved, her immense nosegay, her baby Joe, and, in her small bundle, her one pair of ruffled pillow-slips. She was starting out in the world again, and the world looked to her unaccountably new and beautiful.
It was morning now that shone upon Aunt Kizzie and her child. But night came, utterly dark and cheerless night, to both mother and boy. The two were put upon the block together. The boy showed for himself. But the sexagenarian human chattel was mercilessly scrutinized. She was made to sing, dance, and run. Her red turban was torn off, and in spite of the hirsutian manipulations to which she had been subjected, her wool appeared, like Shakspeare's spirits, mixed, black, white, and grey.