‘An’ him mudder?’ Delgado inquired curiously after a moment’s pause, taking a lazy puff at a cigarette which Isaac handed him.
‘Him mudder!’ Rosina said. ‘Ah, dere now, I forgettin’ clean what Uncle ’Zekiel, him what is butler up to de house dar, an’ hear dem talk wit one anodder at dinner—I forgettin’ clean what it was him tell me about him mudder.’
Delgado did not urge her to rack her feeble little memory on this important question, but waited silently, with consummate prudence, till she should think of it herself and come out with it spontaneously.
‘Ha, dere now,’ Rosina cried at last, after a minute or two of vacant and steady staring at the orbless eyeholes of the skull opposite; ‘I is too chupid—too chupid altogedder. Mistah ’Zekiel, him tellin’ me de odder marnin’ dat Mistah Noel’s mudder is le-ady from Barbadoes.—Dat whar you come from youself, Isaac, me fren’. You must be ’memberin’ de family ober in Barbadoes.’
‘How dem call de family?’ Isaac asked cautiously. ‘You ebber hear, Rosie, how dem call de family? Tell me, dar is good girl, an’ I gwine to lub you better’n ebber.’
Rosina hesitated, and cudgelled her poor brains eagerly a few minutes longer; then another happy flash of recollection came across her suddenly like an inspiration, and she cried out in a joyous tone: ‘Yes, yes; I got him now, I got him now, Isaac! Him mudder family deir name is Budleigh, an’ dem lib at place dem call de Wilderness. Mistah ’Zekiel tell me all about dem. Him say dat dis le-ady, what him name Missy Budleigh, marry de buckra gentleman fader, what him name Sir-waltah Noel.’
It was an enormous and unprecedented fetch of memory for a pure-blooded black woman, and Rosina Fleming was justly proud of it. She stood there grinning and smiling from ear to ear, so that even the skull upon the wall opposite was simply nowhere in the competition.
Delgado turned breathlessly to Isaac Pourtalès. ‘You know dis fam’ly?’ he asked with eager anticipation. ‘You ebber hear ob dem? You larn at all whedder dem is buckra or only brown people?’
Louis Delgado laughed hoarsely. Brown man as he was himself, he chuckled and hugged himself with sardonic delight over the anticipated humiliation of a fellow brown man who thought himself a genuine buckra.
‘Know dem, sah!’ Isaac cried in a perfect ecstasy of malicious humour—‘know de Budleighs ob de Wilderness! I tink for true I know dem! Hé! Mistah Delgado, me fren’, I tellin’ you de trut, sah; me own mudder an’ Mrs Budleigh ob de Wilderness is first-cousin, first-cousin to one anudder.’