With a stately step the amiable Moor passed on. With a much more stately port Peter the Great followed him, but as he did so he bestowed on Foster a momentary look so ineffably sly, yet solemn, that the latter was obliged to seize the spade and dig like a very sexton in order to check his tendency to laugh aloud.
Half an hour later the negro returned to him.
“What you bin do all dis time?” he asked in surprise. “I was more’n half t’ink you desarve a lickin’!”
“Perhaps I do, Peter,” answered the young slave, in a tone so hearty and cheerful that the negro’s great eyes increased considerably in size.
“Well, Geo’ge,” he said, with a sudden change in his expression, “I wouldn’t hab expeck it ob you; no, I wouldn’t, if my own mudder was to tell me! To t’ink dat one so young, too, would go on de sly to de rum-bottle! But where you kin find ’im’s more’n I kin tell.”
“I have not been at the rum-bottle at all,” returned the middy, resting on his spade, “but I have had something to raise my spirits and brace my energies, and take me out of myself. Come, let us go to the bower, and I will explain—that is, if we may safely go there.”
“Go whar?”
“To the bower.”
“Do you know, sar,” replied Peter, drawing himself up and expanding his great chest—“do you know, sar, dat I’s kimmander-in-chief ob de army in dis yar gardin, an’ kin order ’em about whar I please, an’ do what I like? Go up to de bower, you small Bri’sh officer, an’ look sharp if you don’t want a whackin’!”
The slave obeyed with alacrity, and when the two were seated he described his recent interview with Hester Sommers.