“Naw, Miss,” answered Kettle. “I done heah ’bout ’em, but I ain’t never had none befo’.”
Kettle’s bliss was further augmented when Aunt Tulip put a standing collar around his neck and tied the flaming red necktie under his chin. All was then swallowed up in Kettle’s rapture over his own appearance. He stood before the old-fashioned mirror over the pier table, his head barely reaching the top; his mouth came open as if it were on hinges, his eyes danced in his head, and words failed him. There are moments of rapture when speech is a superfluity, and so it was with Kettle when he beheld himself in his first cravat, and that a large one of brilliant red.
“Now, boy,” said Aunt Tulip severely, who did not believe in wasting indulgences on boys, “now that Miss Betty and ole Marse done been so good to you, you got to do all you kin to holp along. You got to pick up chips an’ fotch water an’ black ole Marse’s shoes an’ do everything you know how.”
“I cert’n’y will,” answered Kettle fervently. And then the divine spirit of gratitude appeared in his eyes, and he said:
“An’ I ain’ gwine to fergit that you washed my clo’es.”
“An’ washed you, too,” replied Aunt Tulip. “An’ you got to do it yourself every day, or I’ll see to you.”
This awful and indefinite threat impressed Kettle with a wholesome fear of the most harmless creature on earth—Aunt Tulip.
Then breakfast was served, and Kettle received his first lessons in bringing in batter-cakes. In the intervals between the relays of hot batter-cakes, Kettle glued his eyes to his own image in the glass with a vanity second only to that of Narcissus.
Of course, the Colonel had to hear all about the party, and who was there, and if the regulation Christmas festivities were thoroughly carried out.
“Once,” said the Colonel, “we celebrated Christmas that way at Rosehill, with an unstinted hospitality. Now——”