"Blanche is quite right!" exclaimed Dum. "The cup she broke was cracked, because I cracked it myself. I cracked the cup and broke the saucer the first night at the beach, didn't I, Dee?"
"No, you didn't. I did it myself," said Dee.
"Well, hoity-toity! It looks like you both think you done something fine to bust up the chiny," and Mrs. Rand smiled grimly as she gave an extra twist to her Mrs. Wiggs knot and got out of her capacious pocket a huge pair of brass-rimmed spectacles. "Come on, now, and go over this here inventory. Business is business, and if the chiny is busted, no matter who done it, it is the business of the renters to make good. I ain't a-saying the nigger done it, but I'm a-saying if'n she didn't, she's the fust nigger I ever seed that didn't behave like a bull in a chiny shop, bustin' and breakin' wherever she trod."
But Blanche had not had her say out and she took up the ball and continued:
"I is large, 'tis true, but I is light to locomotion, and brokerage is never been one of my failures. My kitchen is open fer yo' conception at any time, Miss Dee. You kin bring in the rent woman when it suits yo' invention," and with a bow that took in all of us and left out Mrs. Rand, Blanche retired to her domain and lifted up her voice in a doleful hymn.
Everything in the cottage was carefully checked off, living room first and then the sleeping porches. We were thankful indeed that we had cleaned up so well and had all of our accumulated mess out of the way. The old woman complimented us on the appearance of everything. She was not at all an unkind person, except where coloured people were concerned. She seemed to take a motherly interest in us and highly approved of Zebedee.
"Well, you gals is sho' kept my house nice and I must say it is some surprise to me. You look like such harum-scarums that I was fearing you would be worser tenants than them boys—— Land sakes, if'n the tick covers ain't clean enough ter use agin. I always changes 'em fer a new tenant, but looks like it would be foolishness to take off perfectly clean things, 'thout spot or speck on 'em. Of course, I'll take off the nigger's tick."
Every time Mrs. Rand said nigger it made me wince. Mammy Susan had brought me up to think that that was a word not to be used in polite society or anywhere else.
"Niggers is the onliest ones what kin say nigger," she used to tell me. "Whin white folks says niggers they is demeaning of themselves, an' they is also paintin' of the nigger blacker than his Maker done see fit to make him."
Blanche's room was in perfect order and I wondered if Mrs. Rand would not give her some praise, but that stern person only sniffed and passed on.