Daisy, be a little sensible!" said Preston, who was in a fume of impatience. "Do you think there is no difference between me and an old nigger?"
"A great deal of difference," I said. "He is old and good; and you are young, and I wish you were as good as Darry. And then he can't help himself without perhaps losing his place, no matter how you insult him. I think it is cowardly."
"Insult!" said Preston. "Lose his place! Heavens and earth, Daisy! are you such a simpleton?"
"You insulted him badly yesterday. I wondered how he bore it of you; only Darry is a Christian."
"A fiddlestick!" said Preston impatiently. "He knows he must bear whatever I choose to give him; and therein he is wiser than you are."
"Because he is a Christian," said I.
"I don't know whether he is a Christian or not; and it is nothing to the purpose. I don't care what he is."
"Oh, Preston! he is a good man – he is a servant of God; he will wear a crown of gold in heaven; and you have dared to touch him."
"Why, hoity, toity!" said Preston, "what concern of mine is all that! All I know is, that he did not do what I ordered him."
"What did you order him?"
"I ordered him not to show you the saddle I had got for you, till I was here. I was going to surprise you. I am provoked at him!"
"I am surprised," I said. But feeling how little I prevailed with Preston, and being weak in body as well as mind, I could not keep back the tears. I began to walk on again, though they blinded me.
"Daisy, don't be foolish. If Darry is to wear two crowns in the other world, he is a servant in this, all the same; and he must do his duty."
"I asked for the saddle," I said.
"Why, Daisy, Daisy!" Preston exclaimed, "don't be such a child. You know nothing about it. I didn't touch Darry to hurt him."
"It was a sort of hurt that if he had not been a Christian he would have made you sorry for."
"He knows I would shoot him if he did," said Preston coolly.
"Preston, don't speak so!" I pleaded.
"It is the simple truth. Why shouldn't I speak it?"
"You do not mean that you would do it?" I said, scarce opening my eyes to the reality of what he said.
"I give you my word, I do. If one of these black fellows laid a hand on me I would put a bullet through him, as quick as a partridge."
"But then you would be a murderer," said I. The ground seemed taken away from under my feet. We were standing still now, and facing each other.
"No, I shouldn't," said Preston. "The law takes better care of us than that."
"The law would hang you," said I.
"I tell you, Daisy, it is no such thing! Gentlemen have a right to defend themselves against the insolence of these black fellows."
"And have not the black fellows a right to defend themselves against the insolence of gentlemen?" said I.
"Daisy, you are talking the most unspeakable nonsense," said Preston, quite put beyond himself now. "Don't you know any better than that? These people are our servants – they are our property – we are to do what we like with them; and of course the law must see that we are protected, or the blacks and the whites could not live together."
"A man may be your servant, but he cannot be your property," I said.
"Yes he can! They are our property, just as much as the land is; our goods to do as we like with. Didn't you know that?"
"Property is something that you can buy and sell," I answered.
"And we sell the people, and buy them too, as fast as we like."
"Sell them!" I echoed, thinking of Darry.
"Certainly."
"And who would buy them?"
"Why all the world; everybody. There has been nobody sold off the Magnolia estate, I believe, in a long time; but no thing is more common, Daisy; everybody is doing it everywhere, when he has got too many servants, or when he has got too few."
"And do you mean," said I, "that Darry and Margaret and Theresa and all the rest here, have been bought?"
"No; almost all of them have been born on the place."
"Then it is not true of these," I said.
"Yes, it is; for their mothers and fathers were bought. It is the same thing."
"Who bought them?" I asked, hastily.
"Why our mothers, and grandfather and great-grandfather."
"Bought the fathers and mothers of all these hundreds of people?" said I, a slow horror creeping into my veins, that yet held childish blood, and but half comprehended.
"Certainly – ages ago," said Preston. "Why, Daisy, I thought you knew all about it."
"But who sold them first?" said I, my mind in its utter rejection of what was told to me, seeking every refuge from accepting it. "Who sold them first?"
"Who first? Oh, the people that brought them over from Africa, I suppose; or the people in their own country that sold them to them."
"They had no right to sell them," I said.
"Can't tell about that," said Preston. "We bought them. I suppose we had a right to do that."
"But if the fathers and mothers were bought," I insisted, "that gave us no right to have their children."
"I would like you to ask Aunt Felicia or my Uncle Randolph such a question," said Preston. "Just see how they would like the idea of giving up all their property! Why, you would be as poor as Job, Daisy."
"That land would be here all the same."
"Much good the land would do you, without people to work it."
"But other people could be hired as well as these," I said, "if any of these wanted to go away."
"No, they couldn't. White people cannot bear the climate nor do the work. The crops cannot be raised without coloured labour."
"I do not understand," said I, feeling my child's head puzzled. "Maybe none of our people would like to go away?"
"I dare say they wouldn't," said Preston, carelessly. "They are better off here than on most plantations. Uncle Randolph never forbids his hands to have meat; and some planters do."
"Forbid them to have meat!" I said, in utter bewilderment.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"They think it makes them fractious, and not so easy to manage. Don't you know, it makes a dog savage to feed him on raw meat! I suppose cooked meat has the same effect on men."
"But don't they get what they
