"Now you'll see biddin'!"
"Get out of the way foh Aun' Charlotte!"
"Up, my free niggah! Hurrah foh Kentucky."
A moment more and she stood inside the ring of spectators, her basket on the pavement at her feet, her hands plumped akimbo into her fathomless sides, her head up, and her soft, motherly eyes turned eagerly upon the sheriff. Of the crowd she seemed unconscious, and on the vagrant before her she had not cast a single glance.
She was dressed with perfect neatness. A red and yellow Madras kerchief was bound about her head in a high coil, and another over the bosom of her stiffly starched and smoothly ironed blue cottonade dress. Rivulets of perspiration ran down over her nose, her temples, and around her ears, and disappeared mysteriously in the creases of her brown neck. A single drop accidentally hung glistening like a diamond on the circlet of one of her large brass earrings.
The sheriff looked at her a moment, smiling but a little disconcerted. The spectacle was unprecedented.
"What do you want heah, Aun' Charlotte?" he asked kindly. "You can't sell yo' pies an' gingerbread heah."
"I don' wan' sell no pies en gingerbread," she replied, contemptuously. "I wan' bid on him," and she nodded sidewise at the vagrant. "White folks allers sellin' niggahs to wuk fuh dem; I gwine to buy a white man to wuk fuh me. En he gwine t' git a mighty hard mistiss, you heah me!"
The eyes of the sheriff twinkled with delight.
"Ten dollahs is offahed foh ole King Sol'mon. Is theah any othah bid. Are you all done?"