In Old Plantation Days
Dizzy-Headed Dick
Those were troublous times on the plantation, both for master and for man. The master only should have been concerned; but nothing ever went on at the “big house” that “the quarters” did not feel and know. And they had good reason to know this. The master had been specially irritable that morning, and Dinah told Aunt Fannie that he had driven Jim, the valet, from the room, and had shaved himself—an unprecedented happening, for Bradley Fairfax had never before been known to refuse the delicate attentions of his favorite serving-man.
There was another reason, too, why the quarters should know all about the trouble, for was not Dinah herself the weathervane whose gyrations in the quarters had only to be watched to know which way the wind blew at the big house, and when Big Ben from the Norton plantation came over to visit her Emily, as he had been doing for a year past, had she not driven him from the place?
“I ain’t a-raisin’ darters,” she said indignantly, “to th’ow away on de likes o’ dem No’ton niggahs; w’en Em’ly m’ay, I spec’ huh to look fu’ biggah game in tallah trees.”
“But, Dinah,” said Aunt Fannie, “yo’ been lettin’ Ben gallant Em’ly right erlong fu’ mos’ nigh a yeah; huccome yo’ done change so quick?”
Dinah turned upon her interlocutor the look of disgust which is only possible with a match making matron as she replied: “La, A’nt Fannie, chile, you don’ know? I let huh go ‘long o’ him case I hadn’t ‘skivered yit dat de niggah had any ‘tentions. Soon ez I did, I made him faihly fly.”
Aunt Fannie laughed significantly, because she knew her people so well, and said with apparent irrelevance: “I ain’t seed Mas’ Tawm No’ton up to de big house fu’ a day er so.”
It was irrelevant, but confidential.
“Heish, honey; Mas’ Bradley done driv’ him away too long ‘go to talk ’bout. He ‘lows how ef Mis’ Marg’et cain’t find no bettah match fu’ huhse’f dan Tawm No’ton she kin des’ be a ol’ maid, lak huh A’nt Marg’et.”
“Whut’s de mattah wid Mas’ Tawm? He good quality an’ mighty well off?”
“Whut’s de mattah? W’y, he wil’ ez a young deeh; whut wid hoss-racin’ an’ gwine down de ribber to Noo Cleans, he des’ taihin’ up awful Jackl”
“But hol’ on; I don’ see de rights o’ dat. Phoebe say dat Mas’ hisse’f was one o’ de hoss-racin’est, travelin’-erroun’est young mans in de country w’en he was a-comm’ erlong.”
“Sh-sh; maybe he done been dat, but den Mas’ he settled down.”
“Den w’y don’ he give Mas’ Tawm a chanst? A hoss got to be a colt fus’, ain’t he?”
“Look hyeah, A’nt Fannie, whut’s de mat-tah’d you?
Aunt Fannie was wiser than she seemed. She was the cook for the big house, and from the vantage ground of her kitchen, which sat just a little way off the back veranda, she saw many things. Besides, her son Dick was a house boy, and he told her others.
She and Dick had special reasons for loving and cherishing the young Miss Margaret, for, when angry at some misdemeanor of the black boy’s, Bradley Fairfax had threatened to sell