Wondering why her friend had selected for her the name—if she remembered rightly—of one of Blue Beard’s wives, Hester bowed, and was about to speak when Dinah put her flat nose close to hers and sternly said, “Dumb.”
“Moreober,” she continued, “you mustn’t bow like a lady, or you’ll be diskivered ’mediately. You must bob. Sally!”
This last word was shouted. The instant effect was the abrupt stoppage of one of the disagreeable sounds before referred to—a sound as of pounding—and the appearance of a black girl who seemed to rise out of a pit in the floor at the darkest end of the cellar.
“Sally, show dis yar stoopid gal how to bob.”
The girl instantly broke off, so to speak, at the knees for a moment, and then came straight again.
“Now, Geo’giana, you bob.”
Hester entered into the spirit of the thing and broke off admirably, whereat Dinah and Lilly threw back their heads and shook their sides with laughter. Sally so far joined them as to show all her teeth and gums. Otherwise she was expressionless.
“Now you come yar wid me into dis room,” said Dinah, taking Hester’s hand and heading her along a passage which was so profoundly dark that the very walls and floor were invisible. Turning suddenly to the left, Dinah advanced a few paces and stood still.
“You stop where you is, Geo’giana, till I gits a light. Don’t stir,” she said, and left her.
A feeling of intense horror began to creep over the poor girl when she was thus left alone in such a horrible place, and she began almost to regret that she had forsaken the comfortable home of the Moor, and to blame herself for ingratitude. In her agony she was about to call aloud to her negro friend not to forsake her, when the words, “Call upon Me in the time of trouble,” occurred to her, and, falling on her knees, she cast herself upon God.