“Well, it’s not true.”
“I hearn, too, that they’s plenty er money ter go ’roun’ in this country, but some folks what thinks they’s better’n other folks has hoarded an’ hoarded ’til po’ folks can’t git they han’s on a nickel. An’ I hearn that they’s gonter be distress an’ misery, an’ wailin’ an’ snatchin’ er teeth ’til some strong man arouses an’ makes these here rich folks gib up they tin. Nobody ain’t a-gonter know who dat leader will be, he mought be white an’ thin agin he mought be black, but he’s a-gonter be a kinder sabior.”
“How is he going to manage?” asked Helen, amused at what sounded like a sermon the girl might have heard from the rickety pulpit of the brick church.
“I ain’t hearn, but I done gib out ter all these niggers that my white folks ain’t got no tin put away here in this Hogwallow or whatever Miss Nan done named it. They keeps their money hot a-spendin’ it, I tells ’em all.”
Helen laughed, and with a final touch at the supper table and a last peep at the sally lunn muffins, which were rising as they should, she started to go help her mother with the dancing frocks and their petticoats that would show discrepancies.
“Say, Miss Helen, is you sho’ Miss Ellanlouise is goin’ ternight?” asked Chloe, following her up the steps.
“Yes, Chloe, I’m sure.”
“An’, Miss Helen, if’n folks ain’t got no country ter love what ought they do?”
“Why, love one another, I reckon. Love the people of their own race, and try to help them.”
“Oughtn’t folks ter love they own color better’n any other?”