And slackening his pace until he heard footsteps behind him, he stopped and waited while a lithe yellow girl overtook him languidly.
"Heah, you take yo' sheer o' de load!" he laughed as he handed her one of the oars. "Better begin right. You tote half an' me half." And as she took the oar he added, "How is you to-night, anyhow, sugar-gal?"
While he put his right arm around her waist, having shifted the remaining oar to his left side, the girl instinctively bestowed the one she carried over her right shoulder, so that her left arm was free for reciprocity, to which it naïvely devoted itself.
"I tell yer, hit 's fine an' windy to-night, sho' enough," he said. "De breeze on de levee is fresh an' cool, an' de skift she's got a new yaller-buff frock, an' she—"
"Which skift? De Malviny? Is you give her a fresh coat o' paint? An' dat's my favoryte color—yaller-buff!" This with a chuckle.
"No; dey ain't no Malviny skift no mo'—not on dis plantation. I done changed her name."
"You is, is yer? What is you named her dis time?"
She was preparing to express surprise in the surely expected. Of course the boat was renamed the Maria. What else, in the circumstances?
"I painted her after a lady-frien's complexion, a bright, clair yaller; but as to de name—guess!" said the man, with a lunge toward the girl, as the oar he carried struck a tree—a lunge which brought him into position to touch her ear with his lips while he repeated: "What you reckon I named her, sweetenin'?"
"How should I know? I ain't in yo' heart!"