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Bunker," she said, arranging the velvet collar under her white oval chin. "Well, I'm a So'th'n woman from Figinya, and I'm Figinyan first, last, and all the time." She shook out her sleeves and the folds of her cloak. "I believe in State rights and slavery if you know what that means. I hate the North, I hate the East, I hate the West.
"Co'nnle Courtland," with an explanatory wave of the hammer towards her companion, who remained erect and slightly stiffened on the cornice, "is no relation to those figures along the frieze of the Redlands Court House, but a No'th'n officer, a friend of Major Reed's, who's come down here to look after So'th'n property for some No'th'n capitalists. Mr.
"Don't yo' think," she continued, wiping her eyes demurely, "that if a young woman about my size, who had got perfectly tired and sick of all this fuss made about yo', because yo' were a No'th'n man, managing niggers if that young woman wanted to show her people what sort of a radical and abolitionist a SO'TH'N man of their own sort might become, she'd have sent for Jack Dumont as a sample? Eh?
"He didn't have any to give," said the lady slowly, as she removed the envelope from her letter and looked up with a dazzling but cruel smile. "A So'th'n gentleman don't fill up his pockets when he goes out to fight.
They're fools enough to believe that a snub or a jilt from a So'th'n girl would pay them back for a lost battle or a ruined plantation!" For the first time Miss Sally saw Courtland's calm blood fly to his cheek and kindle in his eye. "You surely do not expect ME to tolerate this blind and insolent interference!" he said, rising to his feet. She lifted her ungloved hand in deprecation.
But let these same fools know that yo' 're courtin' a So'th'n girl known to be 'Union' during the wah, that girl who has laughed at their foolishness; let them even THINK that he wants that girl to mix up the family and the race and the property for him, and there ain't a young or old fool that believes in So'th'n isolation as the price of So'th'n salvation that wouldn't rise against yo'! There isn't one that wouldn't make shipwreck of yo'r syndicate and yo'r capital and the prosperity of Redlands for the next four years to come, and think they were doing right!
Yo' moved the ladder when I was on the cornice, and I walked all ever yo' head. And, like a gentleman, yo' never said a word about it. I reckon I stood on yo' head for five minutes." "Not as long as that," said Courtland laughing, "if I remember rightly." "Yes," said Miss Sally with dancing eyes. "I, a So'th'n girl, actually set my foot on the head of a No'th'n scum of a co'nnle! My!"
Yo' 'd have had yo'r soldiers; I'd have had back my nigger, which" demurely "yo' don't seem to worry yo'self much about, co'nnle; and there isn't a So'th'n man would have objected. But," still more demurely, and affectedly smoothing out her crisp skirt with her little hands, "yo' haven't been troubling me much with yo'r counsel lately." A swift and utterly new comprehension swept over Courtland.
Of course yo' didn't mean THAT, but that's about the way that So'th'n men will put it to yo'r Gov'ment. For," she continued, more gently, yet with the shrewdest twinkle in her gray eyes, "if yo' really thought the niggers might need Federal protection, yo' 'd have let ME write to the commandant to send an escort not to YO, but to CATO that HE might be able to come back in safety.
Yo' ain't accustomed to the So'th'n sun, and the air in the hollow WAS swampy." As he made a slight gesture of denial, she went on with a pretty sisterly superiority: "That's the way of yo' No'th'n men. Yo' think yo' can do everything just as if yo' were reared to it, and yo' never make allowance for different climates, different blood, and different customs. That's where yo' slip up."
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