Orphy. No, indeed! I think I could feel free to fight for her myself; that is, if fighting was not forbidden by Friends. Yonder’s Israel coming to turn the cows into the clover-field. Little girl, lie quiet, and don’t offer to show thyself.
Israel now advanced—“Well, girls,” said he, “what’s thee doing at the tinman’s cart? Not meddling among his tins, I hope? Oh, the curiosity of women folks!”
“Israel,” said Amy, “step softly; we have something to show thee.”
The girls then lifted up the corner of the cart-cover, and displayed the little negro girl, crouched upon the bag of feathers—a part of his merchandise which the Yankee had not thought it expedient to produce, after hearing Mrs Warner’s anecdote of one of his predecessors. The young man was much amazed; and his two sisters began both at once to relate to him the story of the black child. Israel looked almost indignant. His sisters said to him, “To be sure we won’t let the Yankee carry this child off with, him.”
“I judge we won’t,” answered Israel.
“Then,” said Amy, “let us take her out of the cart, and hide her in the barn, or somewhere, till he is gone.”
“No,” replied Israel, “I can’t say I feel free to do that. It would be too much like stealing her over again; and I’ve no notion of evening myself to a Yankee in any of his ways. Put her down in the cart, and let her alone. I’ll have no underhand work about her. Let’s all go back to the house. Mother has got down all the broken crockery from the top shelf in the corner cupboard, and the Yankee’s mending it with a sort of stuff like sticks of sealing-wax, that he carries about with him; and I dare say he’ll get her to pay him more for it than the things are worth. But I say nothing.”
The girls cautioned Dinah not to let the tinman know that they had discovered her, and to keep herself perfectly quiet; and they then accompanied their brother to the house, feeling very fidgety and uneasy.
They found the table covered with old bowls, old tea-pots, old sugar dishes, and old pitchers, the fractures of which the Yankee was cementing together, whilst Mrs Warner held the candle, and her husband viewed the operation with great curiosity.
“Israel,” said his mother, as he entered, “this friend is making the china as good as new, only that we can’t help seeing the join; and we are going to give all the mended things to thee.”