Foundation Stone

situations.

BOOK ONE

The Home Place

CHAPTER ONE

WILLIAM WHETSTONE hollered: You, Bonapartt! You, Patt! One of you rapscallions fetch me my toddy. Then he settled himself into his porch chair on this summer day in South Carolina in the year 1823. Patt came a-running with a palm-leaf. Bonapartt, a grand piece of ebony, fetched the toddy, then departed after the first snort of approval. Patt stayed to fan the flies away from his master.

By the second swallow old William was hard at his noonday occupation of fretting over his slave-ridden plantations. Smart men, who could figure on paper, had it that there were more than a million blacks in the upper part of the South, with their number being doubled every twenty years. Some gainful toil had to be found for them. Cotton was the answer. But cotton, dammit, needed new land. Maybe this land, like himself, was failing. That thought riled him, and to gainsay his feebleness he snapped: "Here you, Patt, hand over that fan! You draw flies. Git!"

The brown boy skedaddled, chuckling. Whetstone went on mulling his troubles. New land? What would Yarbrough think of this matter of a migration to the South-west? Yarbrough was his favourite of all his eight living sons, though William did not approve of his being still unwed and without issue at the age of thirty. Still, Yarbrough would not mismanage his life, you could depend on that. He was as smart as they came, and no milksop to be scared of a risk. He’d ask Yarbrough’s opinion when he came up to dinner.

At that very moment Yarbrough was down in the plantation office by the big gate, knocking his knuckles against the bottom of a column of figures in a day-book, pondering the same question of great plantations and numerous blacks that were not paying their way. The office was a mere frame box, scorching hot in spite of the grey flow of shadow washed across the floor by the trees outside. It was furnished with a few spraddle-legged chairs, a high desk with ledgers, and oddments such as a discarded top cape and some treasured dusty samples of Sea Island cotton.

The man Yarbrough was proportioned to a race at its zenith, although for the moment he was too obscured by brooding to display his points. To-day his stewardship of his father’s properties oppressed him.

Old worn-out land, he mused, what can I do about it? He picked up one of the bolls of cotton and fondled it. Cotton? But I’ve tried that here, and the crops were all sorry. Now they tell it that in the South-west—in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi—the cotton springs up like weeds. Even the Indians grow it! If we went down there—– He smothered a chuckle at the thought of the roar of anger his father would most likely let out should he speak of galloping off to Alabama.

Slamming the ledger shut, he went outside. There he reared his shoulders back, achieving his own high stature again, while slips of sunshine coming through the leaves showed up the gleam customary to his coin-graven features.

From where he stood he surveyed the family home place.

There was the big gate giving entry from the highway, so long left wide open that it had rusted on its hinges and could no longer be closed. Right at hand was the shabby office where efforts and property were tallied against the profits. Beyond, after the drive had shirred away to one side, was a maze of yew and boxwood hedges coated in late-summer dust and broken by the bright pattern of his mother’s rose-walks. Distant above it all tilted the house, tall and bluish white, somewhat askew because of ill-placed iron grille-work balconies. Yet it appeared beautiful to him, even as it teetered among its scrambled vines.

A homesickness swept through him at the bare idea of forsaking this place. Why, this land of theirs need never grow sterile! He could replenish it from his own abundant strength. He began advancing towards the house as if towards his beloved’s bower. Upon reaching the maze he grasped at a yew branch and throttled it like a woman’s wrist. But it gave back none of the resilience of vital flesh and tendon; instead it broke, brittle, scattering that scent of leaves that age in graveyards.

Up in the gallery, out of Yarbrough’s sight, his father sloshed the last of his double toddy around in its cup fretfully. Desert these cherished holdings of his? he demanded of himself. No, by the Lord Harry! He, William, had seeded this land and harvested it many times over. Here he would rot if need be, or drop from the vine. . . .

So fuming, he drank a swig too much for noonday, and died, purple in the face, a palm-leaf in his hand. As good a way as any, facing out over his own broad acres.

2

While that was happening in a grille-trimmed gallery in South Carolina, in upper New York State in a Dutch kitchen a young girl was teasing a mulatto servant to be allowed to scrape a cake bowl. All ignorant of how profoundly her life was to be changed by that planter’s death, Gerda van Ifort was tickling yellow Pokey in the ribs to win her way. Finally seizing the spoon, she began licking the spicy batter. "Ul-lmn, go-od!"

You’se gettin’ too old fo’ such tricks, reproved Pokey. Turnin’ thirteen is plenty time you was a young lady.

"Ll-um," the girl continued her lapping.

Gerda was the orphan granddaughter of Pieter van Ifort, a man of varied activities. Whenever he went down to the city of New York he visited with the Pauldings, the Irvings, and other men of letters of the day. At one time he had been a professor of sciences at old King’s College, until his bluntness about the Deity had ended his tenure. In any case he was not cut out for anything so serene as a scholar, although he was a man far in advance of his times in the new fields of physics and physiology. Essentially he was a great blunderbuss of a man, Dutch-shrewd, and unhindered in his honesty towards living.

His only child, a son, had married a girl from the South, one Elzivir, a foster-daughter but no blood kin to William Whetstone. Upon marriage she had come north accompanied by her handmaiden, Pokey; upon the birth of Gerda she had died, apparently severing the thread connecting the two families, especially as her husband did not survive her by a month. Thus old Pieter, with Pokey’s help, had been left to rear the child as best he could.

Pokey had not been one of the Whetstone Home Place Negroes; still, having been swapped to William by a Louisiana sugar-planter, she was versed in the intricate New Orleans etiquette of waiting on ladies. She could read and write a trifle, and her speech when she took the trouble came quite close to that of the whites. Yet she wore violet and yellow bandannas such as no house negro would assume, and occasionally used a string of curses common to the canebrakes. Then, queer cross-breed that she was, at other times she shouted frankly Anglo-Saxon ditties above the clatter of her pans, with such lines as:

His beard was red,

But his chest hair black,

When he u-umped a wench,

Tra-la-la-da smack.

Undoubtedly she had lapsed into an awful slattern up here with no mistress to make her toe the mark. Still, she bragged that she had never had any lice on her in all her born days. She had spells also of trying to raise Gerda as befitted a lady, scolding: You ought to keep yo’ muslins and ribbons in a chest with powder of orris root to give them a flucey smell. An’ if you don’ commence to be laced in, yo’ figger’ll run to belly.

Gerda, who was as tough as a grapevine, only shrugged and replied:

Before you talk so persnickety you’d better attend to ironing my pantalets, instead of leaving them rough-dried. A fine lady I make, scratching in public.

Usually, however, Pokey left Gerda comparatively free of the namby-pamby restrictions imposed upon girls in the 1820’s. Also Pokey was a good companion. To-day, for instance, as soon as the cake-baking was finished she had packed up a snack and gone with Gerda back over to her favourite haunt by Mountain Lake.

This lake was no tiny patch of baby blue like a toy looking-glass in the doll villages of the feast of Saint Nicholas. It was a gigantic stretch of arrogant indigo for which the vast sweep of mountains made a suitable frame. There was no smooth beach approach, only a very little coarse pebbly sand that had been grated off the huge boulders at the water’s edge. Gerda skipped small stones across the water for a while to test her aim and the flex of her wrist. After that there was the swimming.

The water was cold and pellucid and sweet. Gerda swam in it naked, at which Pokey was scandalized. S’posin’ somebody pass by an’ see yo’ shame?

Pother! A body unknown in the water feels no shame.

The water slipped over her so smoothly that Gerda could feel her body expanding until it took up all the room inside of her, clear to the outside curves. Pokey, she cried, "the water makes your body fit your skin, instead of being just an up-and-down little string at the centre like the wick of a candle. You ought to come on in too."

Hush! You know I wouldn’ go in washin’ befo’ nobody.

After her bathe Gerda lay on a big rock and let the sun and air dry her. She stretched on her back, her eyes drowning upwards into the sky. Suddenly she was seized with an impulsive assumption of power. The bigness of the lake and her body beside it wrapped in air, gave her a feeling of triumph over all creation. She thrust her arms into space like spears, and shouted: "Pokey, that’s the sky they’re sticking into, my hands. The sky!"

Pokey cackled gleefully: I declare, you put me in mind of that tale that goes: Then the Lawd A’mighty leaned back on his yaller throne an’ sez: ‘Help yo’self to a nice-size kingdom and plenty of victuals, Sistah. An’ help yo’self to a good big piece of high groun’ to stomp an’ holler on. Kase I’se the Lawd of this heah earth. An’ you, Sistah God, is my fav’rit chile.’ Yes’m, you acks jes’ like that high-steppin’ critter. Like Sistah God ownin’ the earth.

Well, exulted Gerda, so she did feel like Sister God! Ruling a realm on high right this moment. Then abruptly she turned mortal again. She sat up on her rock, yawning so widely that she all but cracked her jaw-bone. I’m hungry. My stomach is as hollow as your old gourd dipper.

Pokey began unwrapping their snack.

In such hit-or-miss fashion did Gerda live until she was thirteen, with Pokey for both duenna and servant, and Gran, as she called old Pieter, for guardian. Still a rambunctious child when it came to romping, she was yet full-developed: deep of bosom, high-coloured, vivid-eyed, a maid being swiftly prepared for womanhood. On that day though, as she munched on one tea cake after another, she had no way of knowing how soon she was to be done with this first burgeoning.

3

In the name of God Amen—

I William Whetstone of Egton District and the

State of South Carolina being in perfect helthe,

since & Memory do Constitute and Ordaine this

to be my last will and testament.

Signed this 4th day of April 1823

his

WILLIAM x WHETSTONE

mark

Thus read Squire Dakin, causing William Whetstone, now under the sod, to be once more present full force in the Long Room of his home. Unable to sign his name, he had yet been able to make his word law even after death. Descendant of a Cavalier who had come to America to escape the rule of Cromwell, he had ever the Cavalier attitude towards book learning. His royalist forebears had left poesy to the hired bards and delegated letters to the clergy, though for a while they had sent sons back to the England of the second Charles to sharpen their sword-play and smooth their manners. While there, some of them had picked up the trick of courtier verse, which was a pretty thing and pleased the ladies.

Since then, however, there had been a change of kings in England and a war for independence from all kings in America, so that practice had disappeared. His own sons had been lucky to con their lessons under Squire Dakin, while he himself had been too taken up with crops to scribble with a quill. He had simply ordered the squire to set down his wishes, hard and fast, as his family would hear.

They had put on the look of sanctimony usually kept for prayers, but with strain beneath the sanctimony.

His married sons and older daughters, having been amply provided for long since, were now ticked off with tokens such as fine gaming pieces and feather beds plumper than clouds.

His widow he treated with both generosity and the gallant scepticism due the woman of his own marital choice. I Lend unto my beloved wife Lisbeth, in during her widowhood her cooke . . . her four skilled wenches . . . my neat stock of animals and fowls except as herein otherwise disposed. . . . Also the use of my Home Place and household furtherture [furniture]. And after her dicease or Marriage to be equally divided between my two children Yarbrough & Lucey.

Jealous-hided tartar, how he does go on! murmured Miz Lisbeth, glancing down at her twittery old hands. The fingers were worn to wisps from being bleached to show off before company, after having been stained brown peeling fruit for the preserve kettles. Now, pray tell, who’d ever look at me?

Many a one! declared Yarbrough, crumpling one of those tuckered hands.

Pooh, old things that can’t chew clabber, said Miz Lisbeth disdainfully. No, thank you! You’ll have to see after me now, son.

"You know," he promised.

Next they heard how William had cut off his lazy black sheep Ruthven, or Ven as he was called, grandly with five shillings instead of the proverbial one shilling, and, one body servant Cudge, withoute whose help it is my opinion that Ruthven would not stir out of bed till Kingdom Come. Ven guffawed at that belittling, dribbling tobacco juice down his finely tucked shirt bosom. His sister Lucey attempted to wither him with one immaculate look, but he was gloating at his father’s further charge that he be provided with proper sustance such like as he has in my lifetime enjoyed.

Egad! crowed Ven. Now my throat won’t parch.

One bottle a day, retorted Lucey, is a gracious plenty for you, sir.

I’ve been a two-bottle man for more’n twenty years, and you’ll make no ninny out of me now neither.

Lucey was no longer attending him, for she was being read out her own portion. To my daughter Lucey who doth reside at the Home Place & is wedded to one Guy Hampley I leave the Cargill lands, 4 hands able, two negroe wenches, her tire-maiden and 12 fine geese for down plucking.

To her foppish husband Guy an order for two new sets of pantaloons, hopeing to make him more a man. To her son Willy even if he do be taking after his father, 100 acres of the Chinquapin lands 3 helthy hands, the mare Netty he rides, and fifty £ sterling from my English funds to be expended on further schooling. To Lucey’s daughter all the doll poppetts 5-£ can buy, 2 new frocks, her present fetch-it gel, a portion of sugar lumps. . . . Also half-share inheritance of her mother’s holdings if she cease sucking on her thumb before the age of ten, she being now 8.

Momentarily Lucey was overlooking the slighting phrases while preening over the numerous benefactions bestowed upon herself and family. Then suddenly her fan-tail collapsed, bedraggling her pride, as she heard the next bequest.

To the heir of my beloved dead foster-daughter Elvizir van Ifort, I do leave the Frederick plantation entire, six hands, two wenches, stock sound in limb to be chosen by Yarbrough, and one featherbed. For now do I greatly regret that I never saw to Elvizir’s welfare after she journeyed northerly. So do I hope her heir prospers in the enjoyment of the land I do bequeathe.

The entire group sat in silence for a space, realizing how old William had been bound to acknowledge all claims of all dependents as did most landed men of the South, even if the claim was slight and the burden heavy. Yet a number of them did not blame Lucey for resenting so handsome a bestowal upon an unknown child, that might otherwise have fallen to her children.

However, Squire Dakin’s voice continued, and the bodies of all the listeners stiffened to hear what had been left to the real heir, Yarbrough.

To him was left the residue, including the choice plantations near the highway, the bulk of the stock, numerous hands, my Mill stones that I have now ready cutt, my blacksmith tools, all the craft-trained negroes, also my two best house servants named Patt & Bonapartt, and the Grits mill—To him and his wife when he takes one—to them and their heirs Forever.

The squire’s voice ceased like a sermon. Someone sighed. It was everybody. The black boys moved the long-pole fans at the flies again. Miz Lisbeth pulled her fingers loose from Yarbrough’s. I’d better go see how they’re preparing the supper, she remarked from force of habit.

Little Gracey thought she was supposed to cry as she had at Gran’pa’s funeral, and so did.

CHAPTER TWO

ALTHOUGH Pieter van Ifort had known and pondered for well-nigh a week upon Gerda’s inheritance, he had not as yet imparted the tidings to her. The Dutch did not bandy even the talk of property. First it must pass through a process of contemplation, before it took on the dimensions of a fact that could be set before others in speech. Then, too, the manner of its announcement must be suitably phlegmatic. To this procedure even the outspoken Pieter subscribed.

To-day, however, he deemed the time had come to divulge it, so he summoned Gerda. Can you walk a piece without blowing like a porpoise?

She only laughed, drawing in the air so filled with that cider richness that hangs over apple country in early autumn.

He then said: So. We shall climb the summit to Winkler’s. A fitting pilgrimage for the occasion. What occasion it was not her place to ask.

Winkler’s was in the other direction from the Lake, and Gerda had never been there. It was the home of some Low Dutch, who kept a few stored supplies to trade to their neighbours and did a bit of innkeeping on the side for travellers. It was reached by a narrow path among the evergreens, where there was deep silence broken only by the scratching of the rock chipmunks, and Gran humming gutturally.

Gerda did not query him. He would speak in his own good time. Presently he did and it was, surprisingly, of her parents.

She knew little about her parents, for Gran was too hearty to dwell on their memory in sentimental detail. Now he said: "Never knew whether your father had any real ability. He didn’t live long enough to show what he could accomplish. He had an explosion trying an experiment in physics to show I was wrong on a point. I remember his looking at me with the one eye he had left at the end, saying: ‘Now that goes to prove my point.’ Imagine boasting over blowing himself into bits! I, I potter some at science, but, och, give me life above everything. So few are the years of it to us in any case. And after that of what are we sure except a blackness? Yet he had plenty of sand, he! That I say. En so also had your mother, Elzivir, though no bulk to back it up. Now you, I think you will be a great oaf like the van Iforts, and breed sons as easy as calving."

In truth Gerda did resemble Gran in his robust zest. He eyed her approvingly. No, I think your Southern heritage will not harm you. Holland has seen to that.

Somewhat baffled, Gerda wondered what her mother had to do with her more than usual. Even Pokey, when she was trying to teach her her manners, seldom mentioned the frail dead girl. Certainly Gerda was not going to let herself take after Elzivir by being sickly. She dropped the thought at the sight of Winkler’s.

The outside of the hut, she saw, was covered with bark, and the sun smote it into a pumpkin glow against the gloom of the crouching cedars. Gerda picked a trickle of amber resin out of a crack and chewed on its spiciness with relish. Gran rapped on the raw panel with his walking-staff. The door was flung open by a woodsman in a leathern jacket and a toboggan cap. A gnarled dwarf was stoking a great oven, and a woman was coming in from a back door with two milk-pails hung from a wooden yoke over her shoulders. There was a girl, too, with a red kerchief knotted at her neck, swinging her feet over the edge of the deal table on which she was seated. Strings of dried herbs and good sausage hung from the rafters, and the whole interior was one of warm sepias that went with people who lived close to the broken brown of earth.

The older woman set her buckets down with a clatter. "Mijnheer van Ifort! But this is goed!" And there was a great hubbub.

A place was made for Gran, not too close to the oven; also a place for Gerda. The wench was addressed sharply, to bring Mijnheer some ale. But she did not move sharply; she went with a deliberate indolence, swaying as she walked. When at last she stood beside Gran with the beer, he looked at her quizzically and guffawed. I’d like it better if you fetched my beer with more haste, Marta. I’m too old to be amused by the sway of your hips while you loaf over serving me.

Marta shrugged with lazy good nature. It was not for you that I put my hips about, Mijnheer. And her eyes slid over towards the woodsman.

"Neen? But see that you hustle with the next draught." And Gran nipped her rounded form smartly.

She brought it. Then pulling a small comb out of her pocket, she leaned over the back of his chair and began combing his thick locks. Gran closed his eyes blissfully, at which Marta laughed. "So, I know what pleases the old men too, hein?"

She crossed her elbows up behind her head and hugged herself, at the same time stretching from the thighs. The woodsman studied her hips from over his whittling. On Marta’s neck was a reddish diamond of skin made by the harshness of the mountain weather; and just as plain as if it had happened, Gerda could see the man’s chin nuzzling down past it to the softer, whiter flesh below. Gerda thought that if she should stick her hand out in the air between those two she could have felt a surge like a tide.

Gran rose at that moment, tugged his beard, rapped his stick for Gerda. It grows late. We must be on our way.

Outside, Gerda spoke up. That Marta, she is no fool about knowing what it is she wants. ’Tis the woodsman.

A buxom one, Marta! chuckled Gran, then blew gustily into his beard. I shall miss all these good folk with their thrift and their tidiness. I fear for my temper in dealing with a pack of negroes when we reach South Carolina.

But, Gran—what do you say? cried Gerda, who had heard nothing of all that.

Now he told her how she had inherited through her mother a plantation and some hands from old William Whetstone, and that they were to journey south shortly, to take it up.

I? How much land? asked Gerda, bursting with a sudden Dutch sense of possession. She had not thought of owning aught before, except a penny now and then or the apple she was munching. Now she wanted him to count up the land, and name for her each of the slaves. "And has Pokey been mine all this time? Yet I doing her bidding?" Was there a house on the plantation? No, nothing but quarters for the blacks. They, Gran and Gerda and Pokey, would stop with the Whetstones until they could determine what had best be done about a permanent abode for them.

Had he not said, though Gerda questioned him, that there was a feather bed left her, also? For her own? Then she would sleep on that one. And he could be sure she would give it a good plumping up each morning herself, not leave it to any lazy negro.

In the village she ran ahead to their house to break the news to Pokey. Now you, she promised Pokey, may be my serving-maid and do nothing but attend me.

I don’t know how I like that. I likes to cook.

Gerda stamped her foot. You will do as I say! You can depend on that.

Sho’! snickered Pokey. You remines me of my first mistis. She carry on jest like you. Pokey was mighty pleased at Gerda’s sudden high-born notions. That night, holding the girl’s bedtime candle, she said: I’ll make out somehow to flute you pant’lets from now on. So’s you won’t be put in the shade by them Whetstone gals. They was always a sashayin’ lot.

Most likely a pack of little feather-headed ninnies! scoffed Gerda. She was not concerned with languishing about in frills. She was setting forth to be a real mistress of her own plantation, of that they could be sure!

2

Two nights before they started their southward journey there was a knock on their door. And when Gran swung a lanthorn to see who it was, why, it was Marta Winkler, with a shawl over her head and cheeks all puffed from crying. When she was once inside she hung on Gran’s hand and wailed: "He is dead, Mijnheer. Dead! My Hans—a great tree fell on him. Ooo—let me go mit you. Away where not he was. Och God—–" And again she was all shaken with sobs.

Gerda stared, dumbfounded. He had meant all that to Marta, that woodsman, like any other woodsman? There was something here . . . so big that it made her feel numb with ignorance, yet stirred by a portent of her own unplumbed womanhood.

Gran was putting Marta’s cries in order. You wish, then, to give us your services, in order to leave these parts? Well, that I think we can arrange. I would do as much for any of your family. And a white female travelling companion for Gerda would not come in amiss.

"I’se waitin’ on Miss Gerda," mumbled Pokey, insulted.

Silence! My pig’s eye! Who is the master here? So-o, yes, a suitable arrangement, that one, Marta. And I have no doubt we will find ample use for you down there among all those slothful blacks.

Huh! snorted Pokey under her breath to Gerda. "That’s the laziest woman, white or black. Outside the bed, cooee!" she tittered, in spite of Gran’s thundercloud brow.

It was settled, though, that Marta was to come with them.

She kin leastways comb the rats out of his hair, sniffed Pokey, ef’n it don’t wear her plumb out.

CHAPTER THREE

NEVER BEFORE had Gerda encountered such supreme courtesy as that in the welcome of Miz Lisbeth Whetstone. A tiny-boned woman, she showed the marks put upon her by the oft-repeated fecundity to which she had been ill suited. Simultaneously she displayed the pride that would countenance no acknowledgment of weakness. Her hands gave grace to greeting and an instant direction to the details of settling the arriving guests.

My son Yarbrough, she informed them, will regret not being on hand to welcome you, but urgent matters required his presence on the Cargill lands for a few days. Patt, watch those boys, they’re joggling the boxes too much. Bonapartt, pour Mr. van Ifort a dram. Gerda, child, you don’t take after your mother, except for something about the set of your throat. It holds your head so far above your shoulders. I am glad to see you have better health than she, and are tall. She smiled pleasantly at being forced to look up into this young girl’s face.

Recognizing Pokey, she half-hugged the mulatto’s shoulders, and the latter mumbled some belated condolence about her old master, William. Miz Lisbeth turned the scene off from any dolorous strain by giving her attention to settling Marta’s station in the household. I’ll put you in the small room off the packing-closet. You spin and weave, I trust?

That gal, warned Pokey in a low tone, needs to earn her keep. Don’ go too easy on her. Gerda noticed how Miz Lisbeth reproved Pokey with a glance, while accepting the implications of her advice.

As they were shown to their rooms Gerda gazed about. Her main impression was one of space, and waste: of high ceilings and incessant windows showing far acres without, of looming dark-rubbed furniture and too many servants within, of wide halls giving into wider chambers, and of a plate with a large cake staling and forgotten on a tallboy.

Their first supper here was something to cause her to marvel, with its maze of rich dishes and the thirty people who sat down to it, including some visiting gentlemen who had never laid eyes on the Whetstones before, but who put up at the Home Place as a matter of course because they were transacting business in the vicinity. Out of the jumble of cousins Gerda could sort out only those who lived under this roof. There was Cousin Ven, who drank whisky instead of wine, and the sugar-coated Miss Lucey with her dapper consort, Mister Guy. They had two children, Gracey, who at eight was learning to faint, and fourteen-year-old Willy, who had asked her if they weren’t kissing kin upon their meeting. Thereupon he had put his mouth, which was like some soft pouty fruit, against hers. Faugh! She could have spat. Breaking away, embarrassed before the company, she had glared at him, but his doting mother had simpered: Now there, his young cousin has captured my Willy’s heart at first glance.

Gerda had no fancy for either the boy or the girl, but, surveying their spindly frames, she decided she could be rid of their constant companionship by exploring the plantation at a great rate. They could never keep up her pace.

Shortly after supper, tired from her journeying, Gerda made her good-nights. Upstairs Pokey, who was waiting for her, opened the door cautiously to prevent any disturbance of the pallet laid along the door-sill. Dat’s where I’m s’posed to sleep, now I been turned into yo’ servin’-maid. Still I cain’t let my bones ache on a hard floor jes’ yet. Takes time to usen myself to it again. So I rolled a quilt into a bolster an’ put it to divide the bed in two. I can sleep good in the small half of it, an’ same time if you feels scared in the night from strangeness, you kin reach ovah and touch Pokey.

All right, agreed Gerda, so drowsy she didn’t see how she could climb up the ladder into the bed.

2

When the rising-bell rang the next morning, Pokey, who should have been up and doing, grunted protestingly. Blindly she reached across the rolled quilt to jog Gerda awake, only to find the space empty. At that her sealed yellow lids flew open to discover her young mistress standing in a long window staring at the view of the side grounds.

Come ‘way from there, less’n somebody see you in yo’ night shift.

Impatiently Gerda switched back into the privacy of mid-room.

Let’s hurry about dressing, she exclaimed. And for Heaven’s sake don’t wash my ears.

I will so! This is the ver’ one morning I ain’t goin’ to let you skip a thing. Think I’ll let Miz Lisbeth catch me leavin’ any wax in you ears? With that she poured water and started the gruelling torture that made Gerda’s ears feel as if they were being pulled out by the roots. It was finished only when Pokey was satisfied with the way the light shone through them in a clear pink. The rest of the dressing was comparatively easy since Gerda didn’t consent to lacing. Within a short time they were both down in the dining-room waiting for the blessing, Gerda in her chair near Miz Lisbeth, and Pokey standing over where she could help serve them from the hot-bread table.

After Gerda had cleared her plate twice, she glanced at Miz Lisbeth eagerly. May I be excused?

Certainly, child.

Gerda nearly dumped her chair over backwards in leaving. Even so, she found her cousins, Willy and Gracey, at her heels by the time she reached the pantry passage.

You needn’t, Gracey informed her prissily, try to tease sweets out of Bonapartt right after breakfast.

Gerda stared her down. Doesn’t your sweet tooth ever give you a rest? She didn’t bother to go into her own fever for exploration.

Bonapartt was very affable about her curiosity even in the midst of directing the dishing up of a certain conserve for a special and testy guest. It pleased him to see how awed she was by the delicacies in his trust, and when she remarked: We never had anything to compare to all this! he opened up his choicest cupboards.

From his domain she went to peek into the busy kitchen, connected by an arcade to the house to ensure the dishes coming up piping hot. She had better sense than to enter it now and be underfoot; instead she went out into the dooryard. When Willy tried to assist her, she shrugged loose from the weaving touch of his hand on her elbow. I dislike that.

You’re not bent on being amiable, are you, Cousin? he asked, trying to tuck her arm into his palm once more.

Again she shook him loose and turned to look out over the place. There was so much for her to discover. How could she rid herself of these pests?

Then almost before the question could die in her mind, Willy was called by his tutor, and Gracey was approached by Dilsey, her little fetch-it piccaninny, who had all their dollies laid out for the day’s pastime. We’re trading doll-babies to-day, announced Gracey. Of course I always get the best of it, for Dilsey’s very obedient. She smiled with sly condescension while the little darky grinned with pleased vanity in her own subservience.

You two, said Gerda brusquely, play your game as planned. I’m off for a walk. As they skittered into the arcade leading back to the house, she made her way down the yard. I have a great deal to learn here, she told herself with a troubled mind, if I’m to manage things right on my own place after a while. I wish I had known my mother now. Then she squared herself up. Still, I can trust the van Ifort way. It will see me through. Oddly, she was not at all surprised at her own deepening preoccupation with production rather than with play. But then, she had ever matched her grip against the real thing, never trifled with the