"It must be a great convenience to be born with black legs," sighed Dee. "You can go bare-legged when you've a mind to, and if you should be so prissy as to wear stockings, when they get holes in them they wouldn't show."
The following is the song that the little boys sang, choosing it evidently from a keen sense of humor and appreciation of fun:
"How yer git on wid yer washin'?
'Berry well,' yer say?
Better charge dem Yankee big price
Fo' dey gits away.
Dey is come hyar fer de wedder,
Pockets full ob money.
Some one got ter do dey washin',
Glad it's me, my honey.
Wen I ca'y in de basket,
Eb'y week I laff
Des ter see dem plunkin' out
Dollah an' a ha'f.
Co'se I ain't cha'ge home fo'ks dat,
Eben cuff an' collah,
Tro' in wid dey udder clo's—
All wash fer a dollah.
Soon de Yankees will be gone,
An' jes de po' fo'ke here;
Cha'ge dem, honey, all yer kin
Ter las' yer trou' de year."
When they finished this song, which was given in a high, peculiar, chanting tune, the little boy of the shoes began to dance, cutting the pigeon wing as well as it had ever been done on a vaudeville stage, I am sure, while the other four patted with such spirit and in such excellent time that Zebedee got up and danced a little pas seul, and Mrs. Green declared it was all she could do to keep from joining him.
"I learned to jig long before I did to waltz," she said, "and I find myself returning to the wild when I hear good patting."
"So did I," I said; "Tweedles can pat as well as a darky. We will have a dancing match some day, too."
The minstrels were remunerated beyond their dreams of avarice, and cantered off joyfully to buy groun'-nut cakes from the old mauma on the corner, where she sat with her basket of goodies on her lap, waving her palmetto fan, between dozes, to scare away the flies.
"Who's the old cove over there with the Venus de Milo effect of arms?" asked Zebedee, pointing to a much-mutilated statue near the Meeting Street entrance of the park.
"Why, that's William Pitt. Louis Gaillard told me we would find it here," explained Dee. "He said it was erected in seventeen-sixty-nine by the citizens of Charleston in honor of his promoting the repeal of the Stamp Act. His arm got knocked off by a cannon ball in the siege of Charleston."
"This over here is Valentine's bust of Henry Timrod," called Dum from a very interesting-looking bronze statue that had attracted her artistic eye all the time the little nigs were singing.