“Mr. Jacquelin, I swan, I am glad to see you, suh—an’ to see you lookin’ so well. I told yo’ Ma you’d come back all right. An’ I told that Yankee what brought you up last night that ’twas a shame they treated you as they done, and if you hadn’t come back all right we’d ’a’ come up thar an’ cleaned ’em out. Yes, sir, we would that.
“I sent him off this mornin’—saw him acrost the ford myself he added, lowering his voice confidentially, “because I don’t like to have ’em prowling around my place—our place—too much. Stirs up th’ niggers so you can’t get no work out of ’em. And I didn’t like that fellow’s looks, particularly. Well, I certainly am glad to see you lookin’ so well.”
Jacquelin felt doubly rebuked for his unjust suspicions, and, as a compensation, told Mr. Still of his last conversation with his father, and of what his father had said of him. Still was moved almost to tears.
“Your father was the best friend I ever had in this world, Mr. Jack,” he said. “I’ll never—” he had to turn his face away. “You can’t do no better than your father.”
“No, indeed,” Jacquelin agreed to that. All he wished was to do just what his father had done—He was not well; and he should leave the management of the place to Mr. Still, just as his father had done—at least, till they knew how things stood, he added.
There was a slight return of a look which had been once or twice in Still’s downcast eyes, and he raised them to take a covert glance at Jacquelin’s face. Jacquelin, however, did not see it. He was really suffering greatly from his wound; and the expression he caught on Still’s face was only one of deep concern. He asked after Still’s family.
Wash had gone to the city to study medicine, Still said.
“We pore folks as ain’t got a fine plantation like this has got to have a trade or something.”
Virgy was at home keeping house for him. She was a good big girl now—“most grown like Miss Blair,” he added.
There was a slight tone in the manager’s voice which somehow grated on Jacquelin a little, he did not know why. And he changed the subject rather shortly.