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We'll do better for her than that." "Is you goin' to sen' her to the 'sylum?" asked the woman. "The asylum!" exclaimed Corny. "No, indeed! You'll see. She's to live here, but she's not to sell pepper-pods, or anything else." "Well, young missy," said the woman, "you better buy 'em of her. I reckon she'll sell out for 'bout fourpence."
There, all in one room, lighted by a huge wood-fire, rafters above, puncheon floor beneath cane-bottomed chairs and two beds the only furniture-"pap," barefooted, the old mother in the chimney-corner with a pipe, strings of red pepper-pods, beans and herbs hanging around and above, a married daughter with a child at her breast, two or three children with yellow hair and bare feet all looking with all their eyes at the two visitors who had dropped upon them from another world.
The homespun bedclothes and hand-made quilts of brilliant colors had been thrown in a heap on one of the two beds of hickory withes; the kitchen utensils a crane and a few pots and pans had been piled on the hearth, along with strings of herbs and beans and red pepper-pods all ready for old Nathan when he should come over for them, next morning, with his wagon.
It was very true that the queen did not live in a palace. Her house was nearly large enough to hold an old-fashioned four-posted bedstead, such as they have at my Aunt Sarah's. The little room that was cut off from the main apartment was really too small to count. The queen was hard at work, sitting on her door-stone by the side of her bits of sugar-cane and pepper-pods. There were no customers.
Chipperton, walked down to the queen's house, to see how she fared and what could be done for her. When we reached Poqua-dilla's hut, we saw her sitting on her door-step. By her side were several joints of sugar-cane, and close to them stood the crown, neatly filled with scarlet pepper-pods, which hung very prettily over the peaked points of brass.
"Well, he was in it, and some ladies, and they stopped and asked Rectus and I how we got along with our queen, and when I told them all about it, you ought to have heard them laugh, and the governor, he said, that Poqua-dilla shouldn't suffer after we went away, even if he had to get all his pepper-pods from her. Now, wasn't that good?"
The churn-dasher, left upon a shelf to dry, was sardonically staring him out of countenance with its half-dozen eyes. The strings of red pepper-pods and gourds and herbs, swinging from the rafters, rustled faintly; it sounded to Si like a moan.
Over the rocky well rose a rude arbor, where a scuppernong vine clambered and hung its rich, luscious brown clusters; and here, with a pipe between her lips, and at her feet a basket full of red pepper-pods, which she was busily engaged in stringing, sat an elderly woman.
The two little strangers sat in cane-bottomed chairs before the open door, still looking about them with curious eyes at the strings of things hanging from the smoke-browned rafters beans, red pepper-pods, and twists of homegrown tobacco, the girl's eyes taking in the old spinning-wheel in the corner, the piles of brilliantly figured quilts between the foot-boards of the two beds ranged along one side of the room, and the boy's, catching eagerly the butt of a big revolver projecting from the mantel-piece, a Winchester standing in one corner, a long, old-fashioned squirrel rifle athwart a pair of buck antlers over the front door, and a bunch of cane fishing-poles aslant the wall of the back porch.
In the rear, on the other side of the hall, was the kitchen with its big brick oven, its yawning fireplace overhung with corpulent iron pots or shining copper kettles depending from numerous gallows-like cranes; with its glittering copper, brass and pewter utensils arrayed on snowy-shelves; with its spotless tables, Its freshly-sanded floor and its heavily-beamed, whitewashed ceiling, from which hung many a bunch of savory herbs or string of red pepper-pods or bunch of seed-corn, or perhaps even a round-backed ham, to get a little browner in the smoke that would sometimes pour out from the half-ignited mass of peat.
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