"Yes, an' free and free make six an' six days shall we labor an' do all the wuck, also the play, fur the sebenth is the sabbath of the Lawd my Gawd!" cried a voice from behind the cabin, and then there came into view the strangest figure I have ever beheld. It was a tall gaunt old colored man with a straggly grey beard. He was dressed in wide corduroy trousers and top boots; instead of a coat he wore a green cloth basque with a coarse lace fichu and tied around his waist was a long gingham apron. His hat was a wide brimmed black straw trimmed in purple ribbons with a red, red rose hanging coyly down over one ear. He was smoking a corn-cob pipe. In his hand he carried a covered basket.
"Lady John!" exclaimed Harvie. "I am very glad to see you."
"Well, now ain't you growed!" said the crazy old man in a voice as soft and feminine as one could hear in the whole south; but at that moment one of the little pickaninnies tried to peep in his basket, and with a masculine roar, he laid about him vigorously with his stick, and with a deep bass voice gave the little fellow a tongue lashing that drove him back into Aunt Milly's cabin.
It seems that the old man had lost his reason many years before and was now obsessed with the desire to be considered a woman. He lived alone in a cabin some miles from Price's Landing, growing a little tobacco, enough corn for his own meal, a little garden truck and a few fruit trees. He had some chickens and when he could save enough eggs he would bring them over for Miss Maria Price to buy. The news of the ghost seen at Maxton had traveled to his cabin in that wonderful way that news in the country does travel, and he had come over to add his quota of superstition to the general store.
Harvie introduced the old man to the members of the house-party. He caught hold of his apron as though it had been a silken gown and made a curtsey to each one.
"Lady John, we are just asking all of these friends of ours to come up to the great house to a kind of circus. They won't believe that it was not a ghost they saw last night clinging to the ivy on the east wall and we are going to prove it to them. We shall be very glad to see you, too, if you want to come."
"Thank you kindly, young marster, thank you kindly! I was on my way up there whin the crowd concoursing here distracted my intention. I'll be pleased to come, pleased indeed." He spoke in a peculiarly mincing way in a high voice.
"I thought you was too pious like to go to the circus, Lady John," giggled the frivolous housemaid.
"Well, you thought like young niggers think—buckeyes is biscuit!" he declared in his natural bass. "The Bible 'stinctly states that there was circuses in them days, an' I ain't never heard er no calamities a-befallin' them what was minded to intend 'em."
"Is that so?" asked Dee. "I can't remember where it said so, but then I do not know the Bible as I should."