“You mean to say,” said Alice, “that when Mr. Frobisher marries it will be time enough for you to think of taking a wife?”
“Adzackly, young mistiss, adzackly, dat’s it. But Lor’ me, I dunno, neither. I ain’t so sartin ’bout dat. Sam don’t want to be hurried up. He want to take he time a-choosin’. A man got to watch hisself dese times. D’yar ain’t no sich gals as d’yar used to be. De fact is, ole Fidjinny has been picked over pretty close, and Sam ain’t after de rubbage dat de others done leff.”
“I am afraid you are rather hard to please, Sam?”
“Yes, mistiss, Sam is hard to please.” [Three weeks from this date Sam led to the altar a widow with one eye and eleven children,—making an even dozen,—who was lame of the left leg, black as the ace of spades, and old enough to be his mother.] “I won’t ’spute dat. Ain’t I patternin’ after Marse Charley? Slow and sho’ is de game Marse Charley play, and Sam’s a-treadin’ in he tracks. Lor’, mistiss, you wouldn’t believe how many beautiful young ladies has been a-fishin’ for him; but pshaw! dey mought as well ’a’ tried to land a porpoise wid a pin-hook!”
Encouraged by the smiles evoked by this bold comparison, Sam bloomed into metaphor:
“But he was not to be cotched, not he! Leastwise not by dem baits. ‘Never mind, Marse Charley,’ says I to myself, ‘never you mind. You g’long! Jess g’long a-splashin’ and a-cavortin’ and a-sniffin’!’ ’Fore Gaud dem’s my very words, ‘but d’yar’s a hook somewhar as will bring you to sho’ yet,’ says I; ‘and dat hook is baited wid de loveliest little minner,’—umgh-u-m-g-h! Heish! Don’t talk!”
Charley could scarcely suppress his delight. “And how soon,” said he, carelessly dropping his hand into his pocket,—“how soon am I to be landed?”
“How soon?” repeated Sam, leaning upon his heavy staff and reflecting with a diplomatic air. “How soon? Lor, mahrster, what for you ax a nigger dat question? How is a nigger to know? But I do believe,” said he, turning his back upon the river, and at the same time landing his metaphor, “dat you have done jumped over into de clover-field already, and you ain’t gwine to jump back no mo’.” (Here Charley withdrew his hand from his pocket and threw his arm casually behind him, across the gunwale of the Argo.) “Leastwise,” he added with a perceptible-imperceptible glance at Alice,—“leastwise I don’t see how you could have de heart to do it.”
Here Charley gave a slight movement of his wrist, invisible to Alice; and Sam, with a few sidelong, careless steps, placed himself behind his master. He stooped and rose again, and Alice saw in his hand three or four oyster shells. These he dropped from time to time, pouring forth, meanwhile, a wealth of tropes and figures drawn from both land and sea; but the last shell seemed to fall into his pocket.
An Anglo-Saxon, if he have a well-born father, a careful mother, and half a dozen anxious maiden aunts, you shall sometimes see hammered into the similitude of a gentleman; but in your old Virginia negro good-breeding would seem to have been innate.