“Oh, nuthin’.” Mrs. Duncan glanced at her husband and wiped a cowardly smile from her broad mouth with her hand. “You see, Mis’ Gill, I’m afeerd you are goin’ to overdo it. You’ve heerd me say I have good stock in me, ef I am poor. I’ve got own second cousins that don’t know the’r own slaves when they meet ’em in the big road. I’ve heerd how they treat their niggers, an’ I’m afeerd all this extra fixin’ up will make folks poke fun at you. To-day in town the niggers started the laugh on Big Joe theirselves, an’ the white folks all j’ined in. It looked like they thought it was a good joke for the Gill lay-out to own a quality slave. Me ’n Andrew don’t mean no harm, but now it is funny; you know it is!”
“I don’t see a thing that’s the least bit funny in it.” Mrs. Gill bristled and turned almost white in helpless fury. “We never set ourselves up as wantin’ to own slaves, but when this one is saddled on us through no fault o’ our ‘n, I see no harm in our holdin’ onto ’im till we kin see our way out without loss. As to ’im not sleepin’ in the same cabin we do, whar in the Lord’s creation would we put ‘im? The corn-crib is the only thing with a roof on it, an’ it’s full to the door.”
“Oh, I reckon you are doin’ the best you kin,” granted Mrs. Duncan, as she passed out of the door and went back to where Peter Gill sat fanning himself. He had overheard part of the conversation.
“I told Lucretia she oughtn’t to fix up so almighty much,” he observed. “A nigger ain’t like no other livin’ cre’ture. A pore man jest cayn’t please ‘em.”
Ann Duncan was driven to the very verge of laughter again.
“What you goin’ to call ‘im?” she snickered, her strong effort at keeping a serious face bringing tears into her eyes. “Are you goin’ to make ‘im say Marse Gill, an’ Mis’ Lucretia?”
“I don’t care a picayune what he calls us,” answered Gill, testily. “I reckon we won’t start a new language on his account.”
Through this colloquy Mrs. Duncan had been holding her sun-bonnet in a tight roll in her hands. She now unfurled it like the flag of a switchman and whisked it on her head.
“Well, I wish you luck with yore slave,” she was heard to say, crisply, “but I hope you ’ll not think me meddlin’ ef I say that you ’ll have trouble. Folks like you-uns, an’ we-uns fer that matter, don’t know no more about managin’ slaves raised by high-falutin’ white folks than doodle-bugs does.” And having risen to that climax, Ann Duncan, followed by her splay-footed, admiring husband, departed.
The next morning, accompanied by Big Joe and the man who had been overseer on his plantation, Colonel Whitney drove over in a spring wagon.