"And do you mean," said I, "that Darry and Margaret and Theresa and all the rest here, have been bought?"
"No; almost all of them have been born on the place."
"Then it is not true of these," I said.
"Yes, it is; for their mothers and fathers were bought. It is the same thing."
"Who bought them?" I asked, hastily.
"Why our mothers, and grandfather and great-grandfather."
"Bought the fathers and mothers of all these hundreds of people?" said I, a slow horror creeping into my veins, that yet held childish blood, and but half comprehended.
"Certainly—ages ago," said Preston. "Why, Daisy, I thought you knew all about it."
"But who sold them first?" said I, my mind in its utter rejection of what was told to me, seeking every refuge from accepting it. "Who sold them first?"
"Who first? Oh, the people that brought them over from Africa, I suppose; or the people in their own country that sold them to them."