"Don't he look lovely again, sir?"

"Well, I don't know about lovely. I thought that about Sarah."

"Now, don't you make fun," said Morgan, giving a heap of wood ashes a
tap with his spade, to make it lie close in his rough barrow, whose
wheel was a section sawn off the end of a very round-trunked pine, and
tired by nailing on the iron hooping from a cask.

"Don't you send that ash flying and smothering me," I cried, as Pomp,
who was helping load and wheel the heap to the garden, began to sneeze
violently.

"Then you shouldn't make fun of a woman, sir, because she's plain."

"I didn't," I said, stoutly. "I meant lovely and well. And if you say
your wife's plain again, I'll go and tell her so. She's the dearest old
motherly body that ever lived."

Morgan drove his spade down into the earth, took my hand, and shook it
solemnly, Pomp, who had ceased sneezing, looking on wonderingly the
while.

"Thankye, Master George, thankye, sir; so she is--so she is."

Pomp came forward and held out his hand.

"Well, what now?" growled Morgan.

"Tought Mass' Morgan want shake hand," said the boy.

"Get out with you, sir. Wheel that barrow right on to the bed next to
the last load."

Pomp seized the handles, went off with the barrow, caught the edge
against the stump of a tree, one of the many not yet grubbed up, upset
the ashes, and bounded off into the forest, to stand watching us from
behind a tree, as if in dread of punishment; but seeing me roaring with
laughter, he came cautiously back, grinning as if it was after all an
excellent joke.

"There, shovel it up again, boy," said Morgan, good-temperedly; "it was
an accident."

"Iss, Mass' Morgan, all um axden," cried the boy, working away.

"One can't be very cross with him, Master George; he's such a happy
young dog, and somehow, after all the trouble, I feel too happy, and so
does Sarah; and to see her smile, sir, at getting a bit of a shelf put
up in her new kitchen, and to hear her talk about the things the captain
sent for from England--Lor', sir, it would do you good."

"Lubbly 'tuff!" cried Pomp, as he scraped up the fallen wood ashes.

"What's lovely stuff?" I said.

"All dat, Mass' George. Mass' Morgan say make um rings grow, and wish
dah twenty times as much."

"Ah, that I do," cried Morgan. "Wish I had--"

"Mass' Morgan like Injum come burn down house 'gain make more?"

"No, you stupid little nigger," cried Morgan; "of course not."

_Flop_