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We had been lying down some time when the old fellow returned, and in the most voluble and excited language told us he had found the water; it was, he said, "big one, watta, mucka, pickaninny;" and in his delight at his success he began to describe it, or try to do so, in the firelight, on the ground; he kept saying, "big one, watta big one, watta watta go that way, watta go this way, and watta go that way, and watta go this way," turning himself round and round, so that I thought it must be a lake or swamp he was trying to describe.
To see Carlotty Griggs "being a butterfly," with utter intensity of joy and singleness of purpose, was a sight to be remembered. For Carlotty was a pickaninny four years old, and blacker than the Ace of Spades!
Once I came suddenly upon old Gump, the major-domo of the house servants, preparing to give a little pickaninny a thrashing, and I stopped to ask what he had done. "He's done been stealing Mas' Tom," answered Gump. "Ain' goin' t' hab no t'iefs roun' dis yere house, not if I knows it." "What did he steal, uncle?" I asked. "Dis yere whip," said Gump, and he held up an old riding-whip of mine.
We looked up the mountain-side, but all of us by this time felt too weary and lazy to scramble up the cliffs, and among the thorns to find a pot of gold. Besides we were hungry, and not a little uneasy as to how we should get back our proper size. A ground-down Pickaninny who had joined us proposed to hop over along the arch of the rainbow and see whether there was any gold on the mountain-top.
To sing out is to cry loudly, to call out, or merely to speak. Sing-sing is a song. The native Christian does not think of God calling for Adam in the Garden of Eden; in the native's mind, God sings out for Adam. Savvee or catchee are practically the only words which have been introduced straight from pigeon English. Of course, pickaninny has happened along, but some of its uses are delicious.
Thatcher came in then, leading the little black boy by the hand, and following him was the negro woman carrying a baby at her breast, and holding by the hand a little woolly-headed pickaninny about three years old. They were ragged and poverty-stricken, and seemed scared at everything.
"I'm on a raft of my own. Have you one, Snowball?" "Ya, massa Ben, ya! I make um out o' de wreck an de water-cask." "Are ye all alone?" "Not 'zackly dat. The pickaninny be long wi' me, de cabing gal. You know de lilly Lalee?" "Oh! she it be!" muttered Ben, now remembering the little cabin passenger of the Pandora. "You bean't movin', be you?"
Then the pickaninny found a swamp blackbird's nest, and showed her how strangely it was made; then they climbed down the chimney of the school-house, and he showed her how the chimney swallow glued her nest together; and he coaxed a katydid to fiddle with his wings, that she might see that. At last they entered the pumpkin patch. "Well," said Sukey, "there's nothing curious here.
Stolid, sensual wretches, with here and there a broad, melancholy brow and desperate jaws. One little pickaninny rubbed its sleepy eyes and laughed at them. "So much flesh and blood out of the market, unweighed!" Margaret took up the child, kissing its brown face. Knowles looked at her. "Would you touch her? I forgot you were born down South. Put it down, and come on." They went out of the door.
I's be'n wukkin' my roots sence you be'n gone, en I 'lows mos' lackly I kin git Sis' Becky back, but it 's gwine take fig'rin' en studyin' ez well ez cunj'in'. De fus' thing ter do'll be ter stop fetchin' dat pickaninny down heah, en not sen' 'im ter see his mammy no mo'. Ef he gits too po'ly, you lemme know, en I'll gib you some kin' er mixtry fer ter make 'im fergit Sis' Becky fer a week er so.
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