--Cupid, has Rhody a freshly broiled chicken for
your young master?"
She got up and rustled about the room, arranging the pink teaset behind the
glass doors of the corner press. Then she slipped her key basket over her
arm and fluttered in and out of the storeroom, stopping at intervals to
scold the stream of servants that poured in at the dining-room door. "Ef'n
you don' min', Ole Miss, Paisley, she done got de colick f'om a hull pa'cel
er green apples," and "Abram he's des a-shakin' wid a chill en he say he
cyarn go ter de co'n field."
"Wait a minute and be quiet," the old lady responded briskly, for, as the
boy soon learned, she prided herself upon her healing powers, and suffered
no outsider to doctor her husband or her slaves. "Hush, Silas, don't say a
word until I tell you. Cupid--you are the only one with any sense--measure
Paisley a dose of Jamaica ginger from the bottle on the desk in the office,
and send Abram a drink of the bitters in the brown jug--why, Car'line, what
do you mean by coming into the house with a slit in your apron?"
"Fo' de Lawd, Ole Miss, hit's des done cotch on de fence. All de ducks Aun'
Meeley been fattenin' up fur you done got loose en gone ter water."
"Well, you go, too, every one of you!" and she dismissed them with waves of
her withered, little hands. "Send them out, Cupid. No, Car'line, not a
word. Don't 'Ole Miss' me, I tell you!" and the servants streamed out again
as they had come.
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