But Kizzie could not go, and did not. She had borne so much, she might endure a little more.
Her pertinacity in staying induced Mrs. Lisle to throw off all restraint. She believed nothing would force her to leave, and fell back to her former mode of treatment of this pitiable woman. There came a limit, however, to Kizzie's endurance. She packed up her few goods, firmly resolved to see her mistress' face no more. She would stay a few days at Amy's and Chloe's, and then go farther. She would have taken up her abode altogether with them, as Mr. Lisle advised, only that she and those amiable women had not been the best of friends. Kizzie had been too solitary and brooding to form a pleasant companion. At the last moment she might again have hesitated had she not already sent her parcels ahead of her by a chance black man.
Having cast a last lingering look about her cabin, she leaned over her cradle, which she wet with her tears. Then going into the sunlight, she bent down over her patch of pinks, which were now in fullest fragrance. She had fallen on her knees, bowing over, and burying her wrinkled face in the rich mass of bloom and beauty.
Kizzie's heart had not broken over the cradle, nor was it doomed to break over her beloved blossoms. A man's step startled her. Raising her head, a tall, dignified military officer of color met her view. He approached her close, looking steadily at her with those smiling, pleasant eyes which Kizzie had never forgotten, could never forget, were they in her Joe of fourteen, or in this fine looking officer. Her heart said—"It is my Joe; my baby Joe," but her lips could not syllable a word.
"Mother," said the trembling, glad voice, though so deep and heavy, "you still love your pinks, mother, do you still love your Joe?"
Ah, what a meeting was that! The wonder is that Kizzie survived it. Sorrow, grief, had not killed, neither did joy.
When Joe told his mother he had come for her to accompany him North, she proposed taking her pinks, earth and all.
"O no mother, I have a house and garden of my own; you shall have a place for your pinks as large as you wish."
The old woman looked up at him questioningly. Before she could speak he said:
"I see what you wish to know, yes, I am married." "And have a baby Joe" too, he would have added, only that he had resolved his mother should be taken by surprise in the visible knowledge of her grandchild.