“Lan' of goodness!” cried Lizbeth. “I knows Miss Jinny. Done seed her at Calve't House. How is you, Miss Jinny?”
“Very well, Lizbeth,” said Virginia, listlessly sitting down on the hall sofa. “Can you give us some breakfast?”
“Yas'm,” said Lizbeth, “jes' reckon we kin.” She ushered them into a walnut dining room, big and high and sombre, with plush-bottomed chairs placed about—walnut also; for that was the fashion in those days. But the Captain had no sooner seated himself than he shot up again and started out.
“Where are you going, Lige?”
“To pay off the carriage driver,” he said.
“Let him wait,” said Virginia. “I'm going to the White House in a little while.”
“What—what for?” he gasped.
“To see your Black Republican President,” she replied, with alarming calmness.
“Now, Jinny,” he cried, in excited appeal, “don't go doin' any such fool trick as that. Your Uncle Dan'l will be here this afternoon. He knows the President. And then the thing'll be fixed all right, and no mistake.”
Her reply was in the same tone—almost a monotone—which she had used for three days. It made the Captain very uneasy, for he knew when she spoke in that way that her will was in it.