"What inventory? Why, land's sakes alive, what are you handin' out to me? Didn't I give him a list of my goods and chattels to be returned to me in the same condition in which they was delivered to him on the fust of the month?"
"Oh, I believe there is a list of things in the blue tea-pot," and Dee raced down the steps and drew out the important document from the beautiful old blue tea-pot on the mantelpiece.
"But, Mrs. Rand, our father has gone back to Richmond, went yesterday, and he told me to tell you to send him the bill for anything that was broken or missing."
"Bill, indeed!" she sniffed. "I don't trust to bills with any of these here tenants. Richmond is Richmond and Willoughby is Willoughby."
"Certainly, Mrs. Rand," said Dee with great dignity, "we will not ask you to trust us for any sum provided we have cash enough to reimburse you. There have been very few things broken and I fancy nothing will be missing. A few water glasses and some cups, I think, are the only things broken."
"Not with a nigger in the kitchen!" said our landlady, rudely. "Yer can't tell me a nigger has gone through a month without bustin' mo' things than that."
"Why, Blanche didn't break the things that have been broken. We did it ourselves. I don't believe Blanche has broken a single thing," exclaimed Dum.
"You is quite exactitude in yo' statement, Miss Dum," said Blanche, appearing in the kitchen door, where she had overheard all of Mrs. Rand's not too complimentary remarks. "I is not been the instructive mimber of the household, and what brokerage has been committed has been performed by you young ladies or yo' papa. I is fractured but one object since I engaged in domestic disuetude and that was a cup without no saucer, and before Gawd it was cracked whin I come."
Blanche no longer looked the mild and peaceful character we had found her to be. Her pleasant gingerbread coloured face was purple with rage, and one of her pigtails, usually tightly wrapped, had come unbound and was standing up in a great woolly bush on the top of her head, giving her very much the appearance of a Zulu warrior in battle regalia. A rolling pin in one hand and a batter cake turner in the other added to her warlike aspect.
"I never seed a nigger yet that didn't say everything she broke was cracked when she come," sniffed Mrs. Rand scornfully.