not Miss Miranda Dows,” said the vision with a frankness that was half childlike and half practical, as she extended a little hand, “but I can talk ‘fahm’ with yo’ about as well as aunty, and I reckon from what Major Reed says heah,” holding up the letter between her fingers, “as long as yo’ get the persimmons yo’ don’t mind what kind o’ pole yo’ knock ‘em down with.”
The voice that carried this speech was so fresh, clear, and sweet that I am afraid Courtland thought little of its bluntness or its conventional transgressions. But it brought him his own tongue quite unemotionally and quietly. “I don’t know what was in that note, Miss Dows, but I can hardly believe that Major Reed ever put my present felicity quite in that way.”
Miss Sally laughed. Then with a charming exaggeration she waved her little hand towards the sofa.
“There! Yo’ naturally wanted a little room for that, co’nnle, but now that yo’ ‘ve got it off,—and mighty pooty it was, too,—yo’ can sit down.” And with that she sank down at one end of the sofa, prettily drew aside a white billow of skirt so as to leave ample room for Courtland at the other, and clasping her fingers over her knees, looked demurely expectant.
“But let me hope that I am not disturbing you unseasonably,” said Courtland, catching sight of the fateful little slipper beneath her skirt, and remembering the window. “I was so preoccupied in thinking of your aunt as the business manager of these estates that I quite forget that she might have a lady’s hours for receiving.”
“We haven’t got any company hours,” said Miss Sally, “and we haven’t just now any servants for company manners, for we’re short-handed in the fields and barns. When yo’ came I was nailing up the laths for the vines outside, because we couldn’t spare carpenters from the factory. But,” she added, with a faint accession of mischief in her voice, “yo’ came to talk about the fahm?”
“Yes,” said Courtland, rising, “but not to interrupt the work on it. Will you let me help you nail up the laths on the wall? I have some experience that way, and we can talk as we work. Do oblige me!”
The young girl looked at him brightly.
“Well, now, there’s nothing mean about THAT. Yo’ mean it for sure?”
“Perfectly. I shall feel so much less as if I was enjoying your company under false pretenses.”
“Yo’ just wait here, then.”
She jumped from the sofa, ran out of the room, and returned presently, tying the string of a long striped cotton blouse—evidently an extra one of Sophy’s—behind her back as she returned. It was gathered under her oval chin by a tape also tied behind her, while her fair hair was tucked under the usual red bandana handkerchief of the negro housemaid. It is scarcely necessary to add that the effect was bewitching.
“But,” said Miss Sally, eying her guest’s smartly fitting frock-coat, “yo’ ‘ll spoil yo’r pooty clothes, sure! Take off yo’r coat—don’t mind me—and work in yo’r shirtsleeves.”
Courtland obediently flung aside his coat and followed his active hostess through the French window to the platform outside. Above them a wooden ledge or cornice, projecting several inches, ran the whole length of the building. It was on this that Miss Sally had evidently found a foothold while she was nailing up a trellis-work of laths between it and the windows of the second floor. Courtland found the ladder, mounted to the ledge, followed by the young girl, who smilingly waived his proffered hand to help her up, and the two gravely set to work. But in the intervals of hammering and tying up the vines Miss Sally’s tongue was not idle. Her talk was as fresh, as quaint, as original as herself, and yet so practical and to the purpose of Courtland’s visit as to excuse his delight in it and her own fascinating propinquity. Whether she stopped to take a nail from between her pretty lips when she spoke to him, or whether holding on perilously with one hand to the trellis while she gesticulated with the hammer, pointing out the divisions of the plantation from her coign of vantage, he thought she was as clear and convincing to his intellect as she was distracting to his senses.
She told him how the war had broken up their old home in Pineville, sending her father to serve in the Confederate councils of Richmond, and leaving her aunt and herself to manage the property alone; how the estate had been devastated, the house destroyed, and how they had barely time to remove a few valuables; how, although SHE had always been opposed to secession and the war, she had not gone North, preferring to stay with her people, and take with them the punishment of the folly she had foreseen. How after the war and her father’s death she and her aunt had determined to “reconstruct THEMSELVES” after their own fashion on this bit of property, which had survived their fortunes because it had always been considered valueless and unprofitable for negro labor. How at first they had undergone serious difficulty, through the incompetence and ignorance of the freed laborer, and the equal apathy and prejudice of their neighbors. How they had gradually succeeded with the adoption of new methods and ideas that she herself had conceived, which she now briefly and clearly stated. Courtland listened with a new, breathless, and almost superstitious interest: they were HIS OWN THEORIES—perfected and demonstrated!
“But you must have had capital for this?”
Ah, yes! that was where they were fortunate. There were some French cousins with whom she had once stayed in Paris, who advanced enough to stock the estate. There were some English friends of her father’s, old blockade runners, who had taken shares, provided them with more capital, and imported some skilled laborers and a kind of steward or agent to represent them. But they were getting on, and perhaps it was better for their reputation with their neighbors that they had not been BEHOLDEN to the “No’th.” Seeing a cloud pass over Courtland’s face, the young lady added with an affected sigh, and the first touch of feminine coquetry which had invaded their wholesome camaraderie:—
“Yo’ ought to have found us out BEFORE, co’nnle.”
For an impulsive moment Courtland felt like telling her then and there the story of his romantic quest; but the reflection that they were standing on a narrow ledge with no room for the emotions, and that Miss Sally had just put a nail in her mouth and a start might be dangerous, checked him. To this may be added a new jealousy of her previous experiences, which he had not felt before. Nevertheless, he managed to say with some effusion:—
“But I hope we are not too late NOW. I think my principals are quite ready and able to buy up any English or French investor now or to come.”
“Yo’ might try yo’ hand on that one,” said Miss Sally, pointing to a young fellow who had just emerged from the office and was crossing the courtyard. “He’s the English agent.”
He was square-shouldered and round-headed, fresh and clean looking in his white flannels, but with an air of being utterly distinct and alien to everything around him, and mentally and morally irreconcilable to it. As he passed the house he glanced shyly at it; his eye brightened and his manner became self-conscious as he caught sight of the young girl, but changed again when he saw her companion. Courtland likewise was conscious of a certain uneasiness; it was one thing to be helping Miss Sally ALONE, but certainly another thing to be doing so under the eye of a stranger; and I am afraid that he met the stony observation of the Englishman with an equally cold stare. Miss Sally alone retained her languid ease and self-possession. She called out, “Wait a moment, Mr. Champney,” slipped lightly down the ladder, and leaning against it with one foot on its lowest rung awaited his approach.
“I reckoned yo’ might be passing by,” she said, as he came forward. “Co’nnle Courtland,” with an explanatory wave of the hammer towards her companion, who remained erect and slightly stiffened on the cornice, “is no relation to those figures along the frieze of the
