“You no want me, massa?”
“No, Quash, I don’t.”
“P’r’aps,” suggested the faithful man, with an excess of modesty and some hesitation,—“P’r’aps you’d like me to go wid you for—for—company?”
“You’re very kind, Quash, and I should like to have you very much indeed; but at present I’m very much out of sorts, and—”
“O massa!” interrupted the negro, assuming the sympathetic gaze instantly, and speaking with intense feeling, “it’s not in de stummik, am it?” He placed his hand gently on the region referred to.
“No, Quash,” Lawrence replied, with a laugh, “it is not the body at all that affects me; it is the mind.”
“Oh! is dat all?” said the negro, quite relieved. “Den you not need to boder you’self. Nobody ebber troubled long wid dat complaint. Do you know, massa, dat de bery best t’ing for dat is a little cheerful s’iety. I t’ink you’ll be de better ob me.”
He said this with such self-satisfied gravity, and withal seemed to have made up his mind so thoroughly to accompany his young master, that Lawrence gave in, and they had not gone far when he began really to feel the benefit of Quashy’s light talk. We do not mean to inflict it all on the reader, but a few sentences may, perhaps, be advantageous to the development of our tale.
“Splendid place dis, massa,” observed the negro, after they had walked and chatted some distance beyond the town.
“Yes, Quash,—very beautiful.”