“What kind of people does that sort of hair grow on?” Flutters asked, running his hand through his tight-curling hair.
“On—on darkeys,” answered Hazel, ruefully. “But it does not curl so tight as—as some darkeys,” hoping there might be a mistake somewhere.
“So much the better for me,” Flutters answered, cheerily.
“Are—you—a regular—darkey—really?” questioned Starlight, with a little pause between each word.
“Well, I'm what they call a mulatto; that's not quite so bad as an out-and-out darkey, perhaps.”
“Oh, Flutters, don't you mind?” asked Hazel, who was disappointed enough that the hero of this thrilling adventure should prove to be only a kind of negro. Hazel had an idea as, sadly enough, many far older and wiser than she had in those days—and, indeed, for long years afterward—that negroes were little better than cattle, and that it was quite right to buy and sell them in the same fashion.
“What would be the use of minding?” said Flutters, in response to her sympathetic question; “minding would not make things any different, Miss Hazel.”
It was the first time he had called her by name, and Hazel, born little aristocrat that she was, was glad to discover that “he knew his place,” as the phrase goes—so far, at least, as to put the Miss before her name.
After this the children trudged along for a while in silence, each busy with their own thoughts. Starlight was beginning to have some misgivings as to the course he had taken. It might, after all, become a serious question what to do with Flutters. He began to wonder how Aunt Frances would look when he should go back to the farm-house next day with his little protégé in tow. She would be pretty sure to say, “What are you thinking of, Job dear? It is not at all as though we were in our own home, you know. We cannot allow the Van Vleets to take this strange little boy into their home for our sakes; though no doubt they would be willing to do it.”
Yes, the more he thought of it, the more he felt sure that would be just what she would say; strange that all this had not occurred to him before, and a little sickening sensation—half presentiment, half regret—swept over him. So it was that Starlight trudged along in silence, for, of course, such thoughts as those could not be spoken with Flutters there to hear them.