"Oh, dat's whar I smokes my meat. They's some shoulders up dar; an' some sides er baking wif a streak er fat an' a streak er lean as pretty as any you kin buy in de city. An' them's my little chany valuebowles what I been collecking of sence I was a baby," said Aunt Rosana to Dum, who was examining a great array of little china ornaments on top of a large old highboy.
There were little china girls kissing little china boys; little baskets with turtle doves on the handles; pink puppies and green cats, some of them meant for match safes and some of them purely ornamental; little cups and saucers of every shape and hue; little pitchers with big ears and some with no ears at all. I have never been in a cabin of self-respecting colored people where there was not a chest of drawers or a table filled with similar treasures. I know Aunt Rosana thought as much of her "chany valuebowles" as Father did of his books, and her sensations when Dum almost dropped a little shell-covered box was just what Father's would have been if he had seen a careless reader turn down a page in one of his beloved books, or bend back the covers of one of his first editions.
"Do look at this," begged Dum of Mr. Kent, who had just entered the cabin. She held up in her hand a china cow of a decidedly lavender hue with horns and hoofs of gilt, and quoted:
"'I never saw a purple cow;
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.'"
"'Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow"—
I'm sorry now I wrote it!
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'll kill you if you quote it!'"
laughed Mr. Kent, taking the fearful and wonderful animal in his hands and examining it with great interest. "Isn't this place delightful? If I had only brought my sketching things instead of my gun, I'd stay here and paint. I'm going to ask Aunt Rosana to let me take some time exposures of the interior of her cabin. Just look at that bed and that fireplace! Thank goodness, I've got my camera with a perfectly new film good for twelve exposures."
"Well, Gawd be praised dat ole Shanghai gib me warnin' of comp'ny comin' an' I done stirred my stumps an' straightened up some, efn my room's goin' ter git its Dager'type took," and Aunt Rosana's flesh quivered with delight.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MIGHTY HUNTER.