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When Daisy first entered upon her new life she had affected a nun-like garb as one most appropriate, but after a little child said to her once, "I'se don't like your black gown all the time. I likes sumptin' bright and pretty," she changed her mind and gave freer scope to her natural good taste and love of what was becoming.
As a quietus during the washing, Mandy Ann had suggested that "mabby de gemman done brung somethin'," and remembering this the little girl at once asked, "Has you done brung me sumptin'? Mandy Ann tole me so."
She had caught on to a good many things at Miss Perkins's, and "served" was one of them. "I don't s'pose Miss Dory will understan'," she thought, "but he will, and see dat dis nigger know sumptin'."
Maybe 'twas mean, but sometimes I watched her readin' de letter, her han's flutterin' as she opened it like a little bird's wings when it's cotched. I think she was allus 'spectin' sumptin' what never comed. The letters was short, but it took her a mighty time to read 'em, 'case you see she wasn't good at readin' writin', an' I 'specs de Colonel's handwrite wasn't very plain.
The Colonel's thermometer dropped lower still at the speech, so decidedly African, and his pride rose up in rebellion, and his heart sank, as in fancy he heard this dialect in his Northern home. But he must bear it, and when, as he did not at once respond to her question, she said, "Has you done brung me sumptin'?" he was glad he had removed the little ivory book from his watch-chain.
But de lam gin up after a while. All de hope an' life went out of her, an' she died' an' you done 'tended her funeral, you 'members it, as fust class as I could make it. I tole you sumptin' den, but not all this. It wasn't a fittin' time, but seein' you brings it all back.
He's more white dan black, an' is mighty proud of his name, Hamilton, 'case somebody tole him thar was once a big man, Hamilton, an' when Mandy Ann had twin boys, she was tole to call 'em Alexander an' Aaron, sumptin', I doan justly remember what. It makes me think of a chestnut.
I ask papa is you pretty, an' he tell me yes, bootiful, an' every night I p'ays for you and say God bress papa an' mam-ma, an' auntie, and Miss McDolly, and 'ittle brodder, an' make Daisy a dood dirl, and have Miss McDolly send her sumptin' for Tissmas, for Christ's sake.
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