Betty laughed, and went over. There was a pause in the singing: then I heard a man's voice: "Go 'way wid dat fool talk! Whar she gwine git watermillions an' mushmillions by de bar'l, an' dey ain't more'n fa'rly ripe?"
"Mr. Smith sent 'em from de city," simpered Betty, who liked to put on airs with the country-folk; "an' Mrs. Brown, of your nabority, reposed her some to-day."
"Dat's so 'bout dem from town, 'cos I helped to tote 'em up to de house," said another.
"Huk kum she ain't et 'em?"
"The baby conwulshed, an' Mrs. Smith's mind disbegaged of de melons," replied Betty.
"Huk kum he sen' so many?" asked the first speaker, who appeared to be business-manager, and duly afraid of being swindled—fervid in fair speech, and correspondingly suspicious. "His wife mus' be a mons'ous hearty 'ooman!"
"He knowed she were goin' to resperse 'em to her village fren's too, of course. Which we all know dere ain't no place where you carn't" (Betty was from Cumberland county, and pronounced the a broad, to the envious disgust of the Rockbridge darkies) "git fruit like you carn't git it in the country. It is always five miles off, an' de han's is busy, or de creek is riz an' you carn't cross it."
"Come now, town-nigger, we don't want none o' yo' slack-jaw; an' ain't gwine take it, nudder!"
"Mos' incertny not," sang out a high-pitched female voice from some unseen point.