"Little Tommy Grace
Had a pain in his face
So bad he couldn't learn a letter.
In came Dicky Long,
Singing such a funny song,
Tommy laughed and his face felt much better."
Blanche arrived on the scene with a bottle of witch hazel and Annie was made to lie down in the farthest corner with healing cloths bound round her injuries.
"I never heard sech carryings on!" exclaimed the girl. "Mo' like a passel of boys. I couldn't believe my yers that 'twas my young missusses making sech hullybullyboo. That there rent woman come by jes' then, and she rubbered 'til I thought she would sho' twis' her po' white neck off."
Blanche had as frank a dislike to Mrs. Rand as that good woman had for all darkeys, and it was only with the most tactful management that we could keep them from coming to blows on the few occasions when Mrs. Rand came over to inspect our cottage. The white woman was very free in her use of the very objectionable term "nigger," and Blanche on the other hand had an insolent bearing in her presence that was entirely foreign to her usual polite manner and gentle disposition. It seemed strange that two persons as excellent in their way as Mrs. Rand and Blanche should be so antagonistic. They were like two chemicals, innocent and mild until brought together and then such a bubbling and boiling and exploding! Mrs. Rand always entered the house through the kitchen, which in itself was an irritation to Blanche.
"I don't hold to no back-do' company. If'n she calls herself a lady, wherefore don't she entrance like one? What call is she got to be pryin' and appearin' auspiciously into all my intensils? I ain't goin' to leave no mo' dirt than I found."
"Did she come in just now?" asked Dee as Blanche got off the foregoing tirade after having administered to Annie.
"No'm, she never come in! I squared myself in the do'way and she couldn't git by me and she couldn't git over me and Gawd knows she couldn't git under me. I wa'n't goin' to let her or no one else come in my kitchen 'til I got the dislocation indigent to the undue disordinary of yesterday somewhat abated."
"Did she say anything?" laughed Dum.
"Yessum, she said a absolute piece of po'try what I would not defame my lips by repeating to you."
"Oh, please tell us what it was!" we begged.