"My precious papa!" screamed Sudie. "Come right in here.—Mamma, here's Mr. Nettles," offering him like a saucer of cream.—"Just wait till I get my bonnet—where is my bonnet?—and we'll run right down to Mrs. Dinwiddie's and get Vixie and Cordie to help."
The two went giggling and romping down the lawn, more like two hoydens than boy and girl, and pretty soon returned with two others. It would be hard to tell what help Sue wanted, unless it was to laugh, though she did that very well, for Bob did the entertaining. They played "Old Maid," and they put the odd queen on Bob with as frank cheating as if they were the three knaves in the pack. Then they blacked Bob's comical face with soot, and in this costume he mimicked everybody, even the great dragon, Aunt Fanny, being put up to it by her nephew; whereat Mrs. Brown looked grave, while Mr. Brown roared like a great bull alligator.
How did Bob Nettles entertain that family? He was not witty; he could not tell a story without missing the point; he was a poor buffoon; he did not know a pun from a problem; and his voice in singing was hee-haw and screech. Yet he did entertain them better than noted humorists would have done. O thou immaculate and pure spirit of Fun! fathered in no classic fable, brought to sweetness by no toil of thought, thou art indeed the lowliest and sweetest of thy kind. Growing like the wild fruits and berries that the humblest may partake of thy bounty and be filled, thy nutriment is in a quick and cheerful spirit, and thy abundance in the broadest sympathies of our common nature.
But this childish mummery did the mischief, carried as it was by the common vehicle of scandal in the South.
Dame Brown had two maids—Ma'amselle Hortense, who enamelled that fine old face and retired to her crucifix and French novels; and Memmie, the mulatto, elderly, with a complexion like a soiled and creased straw-colored kid glove, light-blue eyes, and a prim, affected laugh like the crackle of letter paper.
The morning after Bob's mimicry the latter went about muttering, as her kind do, to attract attention.
"What is it, Memmie?" asked the dowager, carelessly closing and relaxing her upper lip before a hand-mirror to adjust her false teeth. "Have you and Hortense quarrelled again?"
"Te-hee," crackled the negress. "Missis sich sweet dispisition me 'n' Miss Ho'tense 'bleege to be frien's. If ma'amselle hain't got the true spirit of the Methodies, hallelujah! amen! She ain't none o' them Nettleses pesterin' roun', a-blackin' of his face fo' tu 'ten' like of it's a-missus's beyoucheeful enamuel; and Mistah Waltah a-laughin' of hoss-laughs, a-sayin' it's the very spit o' ole Miss Fanny.—Whar ye been wid dat choc'lit all dis time missis a-waitin'?" breaking out on the under-servant with the breakfast tray. "Some'hin' hap'n top o' yo' head, gal: yo' mammy'll have to git ye peg t' hang yo' hat on. Yo's wuss'n Nettles, niggah as ye is."
Dame Brown's first thought was of a lettre de cachet: she would have chopped off Bob's head without the slightest compunction. Her next was to reduce the rebellious province of Walter Brown and occupy its fairest possession, Sudie, much given to upset the tea-caddy upon occasion.
The General Gage she proposed for this expedition was her nephew. Captain Mason was one of those elegant do-nothings whom statisticians grub out and sentimentalists wail over, as if I were to shed a few ink-drops because the morning-glory at my porch will not make an edible potato of its root, like its first cousin the yam in the near field. He was portly, rosy in the jowls, with fat blue eyes of a tendency to get bloodshot in the corners, and curly brown hair. He wore sumptuous waistcoats, lawn fronts, much irrigation of vest-chain and jewels, like her of Banbury Cross; after which it is superfluous to add skill in billiards and games of chance. He affected a pompous sort of military horse-talk, as if the steed in the book of Job neighed through his conversation. Sudie Brown thought him just awful, and was quite sure he had chopped off heads with that ostentatious sabre he kept on view. But waggish Confederates had a way of playing on the captain's foible by such remarks as "I say, Lind, how about the four Dutchmen you scalped at Perryville?" and there would be good entertainment for an hour, or indeed as long as one chose to listen. If it was absurd to think of that merry little prig Nettles in such a business, Captain Mason's old companions-in-arms at the mere suggestion of his being brought to face a loaded pistol burst into great guffaws of laughter. For all that, it got to look very ugly, and one silly, loving little heart suffered unspeakable agonies of apprehension before it was over.