"Miss," said I, "I might be ready to drop at your feet and cover your shoes with kisses, but you musn't talk to me that way. What little learning I have, has been a source of reproach and trouble to me, and never have I attempted to show it off. I don't suppose I could say as much if I had been fed upon the hot mush of French romances."
She turned about and sat down, put forth her dainty foot, looked at it and said that hot mush was at all times to be preferred to cold slop. "Won't you sit down?" she asked, turning her foot over so that I might see the exquisite arch of the instep. I sat down, though not beside her; and for a time I mused in silence upon the temper, the unhealthful fancy of the old maid who had presided over the mind of this fair creature. I knew that in her selection of a partner she would look high, but I knew also that her actions must ever be subservient to the will of an owner, invested with far more authority than that granted to a husband by our almost mock ceremony of marriage. But how high could she look? Surely no higher than the plane upon which I stood. These reflections threw a dash of old earth into the countenance of my romance, and in bitterness I laughed at myself and at her.
"What has tickled you so?" she asked.
"Two fools," I replied.
"Two fools, or one fool big enough for two?"
"Two fools," I repeated. "We are owned body and soul, and even sentiment, the gift of God, comes to mock us."
In an instant she had planted her feet firmly upon the ground and was standing in front of me. "I can begin to detect a glimmering of sense in you," she said. "In a negro's courtship there can be nothing absurd," she went on, flooding me with the light from her eyes. "An hour's acquaintance is as good as a year's close relationship. He is an animal looking for a mate and he makes his proposal of marriage. He may already have a dozen wives, it makes no difference, for neither law nor society takes any account of his relations with women. My mistress was a sensible woman, and she taught me to hate a negro marriage and I do hate it. I have the instincts of a lady and I refuse to be an animal. I saw at once that you were determined to ask me to be your wife and I am glad you have given me a chance to head you off."
Strange talk for a maiden, there on a hill, under a cliff overlooking broad Kentucky. I might have expected it from a wrinkled hag, a sibyl, but from this ripe and creamy maid it came as a blunt blow upon the head.
"There is truth in what you say," I was forced to admit, "but ours would not be a common negro marriage."
"No, but you are making the courtship characteristically negro. Do you reflect upon how short a time we have known each other?"