ack
your whip and go ahead! You know how, seeing you is the offspring of a
Yankee overseer, what my marster, Gin'l Darrington, had 'rested for
beating one of our wimen, on our 'Bend' plantation. You and your pa is
as much alike, as two shrivelled cow peas out'en one pod. Fetch your
cunstable, and help yourselves.'"

Dyce rose, knocked the ashes out of her pipe, and stood like a dusky
image of an Ethiopian Bellona.

"Drat your servigerous tongue! Now the fat's in the fire, to be sho!
Ever since I tuck you for better for wuss, I have been trying to larn
you 'screshun! and I might as well 'a wasted my time picking a banjo
for a dead jackass tu dance by; for you have got no more 'screshun than
old Eve had, in confabulating with the old adversary! Why couldn't you
temperlize? Sassing that white 'oman, is a aggervating mistake."

Under ordinary circumstances, Bedney and Dyce prided themselves on the
purity of their diction, and they usually abstained from plantation
dialect; but when embarrassed, frightened or excited, they invariably
relapsed into the lingo of the "Quarters."

"Hush! What's that? A screech owull! Bedney, turn your pocket."

With marvellous swiftness she plunged her hand into her dress pocket,
and turned it wrong side out, scattering the contents--thimble, thread,
two "scalybarks," and some "ground peas" over the floor. Then stooping,
she slipped off one shoe, turned it upside down, and hung it thus on a
horseshoe fastened to the mantel board.

"Just lem'me know when you have appinted to hold your sarching, and I
will make it convenient to have bizness consarning that bunch of horgs
and cattle, I am raising on shares in the 'Bend' plantation: and you
can have your sarching frolic," said Bedney, too angry to heed the
superstitious rites.

Dyce made a warning gesture, and listened intently.

"I am a-thinking you will be chief cook and bottle-washer at that
sarching, for the appintment is at hand. Don't you hear Pilot baying
the cunstable?"

She sank into her rocking-chair, picked up a gray yarn sock, and began
to knit unconcernedly; but in a significant tone, she added, nodding
her head:

"Hold your own hand, Bedney; don't be pestered about mine. I'll hoe my
row; you 'tend to yourn."

Then she leaned back, plying her knitting needles, and began to chant:
"Who will be the leader when the Bridegroom comes?"

Hearing the knock on the door, her voice swelled louder, and Bedney,
the picture of perple