Go in the house, yaller gal!" Jimmy Phoebus turned
to Roxy, who obeyed instantly. "Jack Wonnell, you go too; I'm done with
you!" (Jack slipped around the house and made his peace with Roxy before
he started.) "You needn't to go, Samson; I know you're true as steel!"
"I must go an' git de breakfast, Jimmy," the negro said, going in.
"Now, Miss Vesty"--Phoebus turned to the mistress of Teackle
Hall--"Joe Johnson has got old Hominy and the little niggers, by smoke!
That part of this hokey pokey is purty sure! Did he steal them an'
decoy them, or wair they sold to him by Judge Custis or by Meshach
Milburn?"
"By neither, I will risk my life. Mr. Milburn was taken to his bed
Saturday evening, and on Sunday father went to Delaware on legal
business for my husband."
"That is Meshach Milburn, I hear," the bay sailor remarked, with a
penetrating look. "Shall I go and see him on this nigger business?"
"No," Vesta replied; "he is too sick, and it is a delicate subject to
name to him. My girls, Virgie and Roxy, think old Hominy ran away from a
superstitious fear she had of Mr. Milburn, who had become the master of
Teackle Hall by marriage."
"Yes, by smoke! every nigger in town, big and little, is afraid of
Milburn's hat."
"He has no ownership in those servants, nor has my father now. I will
tell you, James--relying on your prudence--that Hominy belonged to me,
and so did those three children, having passed from my father to my
husband and thence to me and back to my father, and from him to me again
in the very hour of my marriage.
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