“No, Caroline, I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Atkins, languidly. “But I think he’s not, or he would have brought his wife with him. These Southern gentlemen are so gallant, you know, and they always bring their wives with them.”
“Ecod, Carry,” blurted Thomas, while Caroline was taking the flattering unction of her mother’s astonishing answer to her soul—“if he’s got a wife already, it’s all up with your chance, me girl. Our Southern friends are the deuce and all among the women, but Louisiana ain’t Turkey, you know.”
“Now, Tom, I should be ashamed,” exclaimed Julia, bridling. “One would think you were never brought up in good society, and I should be ashamed, I should.”
“Oh, you cork up, Jule,” was the fine youth’s exquisite reply. “You girls allow yourselves too much tongue, be Jove!”
“Hush, Julia,” interposed Mrs. Atkins, with soft authority, stopping the young lady’s angry retort. “Silence, this instant. You musn’t speak to your brother that way. It’s low, my child—very low, and you must show your breeding.”
Julia was silent, but glared spitefully at Thomas. It is noticeable that Mrs. Atkins never reproved her boys. Her girls she kept a check-rein upon constantly.
“Mamma,” continued Caroline, perfectly unmoved by her brother’s late remarks, “does he own a very large plantation, and how many negroes has he, mamma?”
“Indeed, I can’t tell you, Caroline,” replied Mrs. Atkins, blandly. “I think he must have a great many of the horrid creatures, for those Southern gentlemen all have a great many, and numbers of the ungrateful things run away, which was the reason why the Fugitive Slave Bill was passed, you know.”
“Yes, and I wish the South would just march up back here on Nigger Hill, and lug off the whole pack of them, men, women, and children, for they’re a disgrace to the neighborhood, and it’s a burning shame to have them staying away from their masters,” growled Horatio, looking up from the gentle and human pages of Charles Lamb.
“All I know about him,” resumed Mrs. Atkins, continuing her notice of the expected guest, “is what your father said in the note he sent up to the house. Namely, that he belongs to a great cotton-house in New Orleans, with which your father deals largely, and that he owns a plantation, and that he is a splendid fellow, and a real Southern gentleman, and one of the chivalry, and all that, and that we must have an excellent dinner, and treat him with true Northern hospitality, and so forth. All which you saw in the note, and really I don’t know any more about him. But of course he is a perfect gentleman, for all the Southern gentlemen are perfect gentlemen, and they are as gallant and chivalrous as gentlemen can be, and as distingué as—as Count Blomanosoff, and I’m sure nothing could be more distingué than Count Blomanosoff, you know.”