"I had not heard it. I am sorry."
Mabel spoke earnestly, for "Mammy's house," a neat frame cottage a
story-and-a-half high, embowered in locust-trees, and with a
thrifty, although aged garden--honeysuckle clambering all over the
front, was to her one of the dearest pictures of her early days. She
could see herself, now--the motherless babe whom Aunt Rachel and
Mammy had never let feel her orphanage--sitting on the door-step,
bedecking her doll with the odorous pink-and-white blossoms in
summer time, and in autumn with the light-red berries.
"Why is that done?" she asked.
"I spiles the prospect, honey!" fiercely--ironical. "Northern folks
has tender eyes, and I hurts 'em--me and my poor little house what
ole marster built for me when Mars' Winston was a baby, and your
blessed ma couldn't be easy 'thout I was near her--WE spiles the
prospect! So, it must be knocked down and carted away for rubbish to
build pig-pens, I 'spose, and me sent off to live 'mong low-lived
niggers, sech as I've always held myself above. She ain't never put
it into Mars' Winston's head to cut down the trees that shets off
the "prospect" of the colored people's burying-ground from her
winder. There's some things she'd as lief not see. I oughtn't to
mind this so much, I know, for I ain't got long for to stay here
nohow, but I did hope to die in my nest!" sobbing behind her apron.
"I am very sorry--more grieved than you can think!" repeated Mabel.
"If I could help you in any way, I would. But I cannot!"
"Bless your heart! Don't I know that, dear! Here, you ain't got no
more power nor me. But I WAS a-thinkin' that maybe you wouldn't
think me too old for a nuss when you come to want one, and could
manage to take me with you when you went home. I'se a heap of wear
in me yit, and there ain't nothing 'bout babies I don't understand."
Mabel colored painfully.
"If I had my way"--she began--then altered her plan of reply. "I
could not enter into such an arrangement without consulting Mr.
Dorrance, Mammy, and I am afraid he would not think as favorably of
it as you and I do. He has been brought up with different ideas, you
see."
"Um-HUM!"
An interjection capable of as many and as varied meanings in the
mouth of a colored woman of her stamp as was little Jean Baptiste's
"altro!" It signified now--"I comprehend a great deal more than you
want me to perceive--you poor, downtrodden angel!"