“No: you can tell us juss as well now’s two weeks later. Ob co’se you’m got de lan’ dar, an’ you can gib it well’s not.”
“You won’t wait for an answer then?”
“No, sah; we wants it right off.”
They thought they were sure of it, and determined to strike while the iron was hot.
“You must have an answer right off?”
“Yes, sah.”
“Very well. Here it is then. NO!” And without another word he walked off and left them. His overseer had been watching the affair. “If you’d a yielded an inch to ’em then,” he said, “you’d a been pestered and run over by ’em all season. ’S long’s they think they can browbeat you into givin’ ’em things, they’ll do it; an’ if you’d a let ’em plant cotton, every acre they’d a had in would a brought three or four bales. They’d a picked all over your fiel’ at night to get their cotton out.”
One Sunday, a week or two later, the lessee was passing about among the quarters. The men gathered around him, and one of them introduced the cotton-planting question again.
“Berry, wasn’t it you that spoke to me about this, up in Natchez, the other day?”
“Yes, sah, you said you’d tink about it.”