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"It's not that," said Annie briefly; "but he makes me afraid of him. If I get too afraid of him I'll stop caring anything about him. I don't want to do that." "Den," answered Aunt Dolcey with equal brevity, "you got think up some manner er means to dribe his debbil out. Like I done tol' you." "Yes, but " Aunt Dolcey paused, holding the carcass of the chicken in her hands, and faced her.
"Say, Annie, do you know a chicken when you see it walking round? Or a turkey? Or a guinea keet? We got 'em all. Aunt Dolcey, she takes care of 'em." "I'd like to take care of 'em. I'll feed 'em, if she'll show me how." "Aunt Dolcey'll show you. She'll be tickled to death to have somebody feed 'em when she's got the mis'ry."
No use payin' any 'tention. Dat why I waggle my head at Zenas to say nuffin' back. Talk back to Marse Wes when he's high-flyin' on'y meks things worse." Annie beheld an abyss yawning beneath her feet. "Yes, but, Aunt Dolcey what's the sense in talking that way? It wasn't anything, just a pitchfork out of place. And he went on so. And he looked so dreadful." Aunt Dolcey rattled her pans.
The fact that he had never lifted finger to Aunt Dolcey again proved that if one person could thus conquer him, so might another. Was she, his wife, to be less resourceful, less self-respecting than that old Negro woman? Was she to endure what Aunt Dolcey would not?
Her child should not be born to poverty and skimping. If only the sun didn't beat so hard on the back of her neck! If only her arms didn't ache so! After countless hours of time she overtook Dolcey and Zenas, and the old woman divined her chief discomfort. She snatched the sunbonnet off her own head and handed it up to her.
Aunt Dolcey did he ever strike you?" "Oncet." "Oh, Aunt Dolcey, what did you do?" Something flared in Aunt Dolcey's eyes that was as old as her race. She looked past Annie as if she saw something she rather relished; just so her ancestors must have looked when they were dancing before a bloodstained Congo fetish.
"What you s'pose he up to now?" asked Zenas, looking over his shoulder. "I dunno but I bet you he plumb da'nted. Zenas, lak I tol' you man may hab plenty debbilment, rip en t'ar, but he'll stan' back whenas a ooman meks up her min' she stood enough." And Aunt Dolcey had never heard of Rudyard Kipling's famous line. "Dat chile might kill he'se'f."
He and Aunt Dolcey were having their own dinner at the kitchen table. "This here's Unc' Zenas," said Wesley. "He's Aunt Dolcey's husband, and helps me on the place." And again Annie saw, this time in the old man's eyes, the flicker of sympathy and apprehension that she had marked in Aunt Dolcey's. "And right glad to welcome y', Missy," said Unc' Zenas.
There was so much for her to see and learn the erratic ways of setting hens, the care of foolish little baby chicks; the spring house, cool and damp and gray-walled, with its trickle of cold water forever eddying about the crocks of cream-topped milk; the garden making, left to her and Aunt Dolcey after the first spading; the various messes and mashes to be prepared for cows with calf; the use of the stored vegetables and fruits, and meat dried and salted in such generous quantity that she marvelled at it.
When I come away from home this morning I asked Aunt Dolcey did she need anything, and she said 'yes, a couple of aprons, but she didn't say what kind." The girl thought it over. "I reckon maybe if she's your auntie she'd want white aprons." Her mistake gave him a chance for the conversation which he felt a most surprising wish to make. "No'm, she's not my auntie.
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