After supper Mrs. Auld came back to speak to Frederick. She was a Lloyd and remembered Frederick’s grandmother. Now she asked after her foster sister, Captain Auld’s wife, whom she had not seen for many years. She had a moment of nostalgia for those girlhood days on the plantation, and patted his arm.
“You’ve grown to be a fine, upstanding boy,” she said. “We’re proud of you!”
Master Thomas did not come.
It was not until the next afternoon when he had been set to work in the shipyard that he heard a pleasant voice at his elbow.
“Hello, Fred! They tell me you’re going to build ships.”
He looked up at the tall, clean young man in his tailored suit. He tried to smile.
“Yes, Massa Thomas,” he said, but his voice was gruff.
Something like a veil slipped over the white man’s face. They stood there a moment facing each other. And the cloud, which in their boyhood had been no larger than a man’s hand, now enveloped them. Frederick hardly heard his words as he turned away.
“Well—Good luck! So long!”
Frederick never saw him again. A few days afterward Thomas Auld sailed on one of his father’s ships. A year later he was drowned in a gale off the coast of Calcutta.