The Major was in town and Miss Lucy had gone to spend the day with a neighbor;so Chad was left alone.
"Look aroun', Chad, and see how you like things," said the Major. "Go anywhere you please."And Chad looked around. He went to the barn to see his old mare and the Major's horses, and to the kennels, where the fox-hounds reared against the palings and sniffed at him curiously; he strolled about the quarters, where the little pickaninnies were playing, and out to the fields, where the servants were at work under the overseer, Jerome Conners, a tall, thin man with shrewd eyes, a sour, sullen face, and protruding upper teeth. One of the few smiles that ever came to that face came now when the overseer saw the little mountaineer. By and by Chad got one of the "hands" to let him take hold of the plough and go once around the field, and the boy handled the plough like a veteran, so that the others watched him, and the negro grinned, when he came back, and said "You sutinly can plough fer a fac'!"He was lonesome by noon and had a lonely dinner, during which he could scarcely realize that it was really he--Chad--Chad sitting up at the table alone and being respectfully waited on by a kinky-headed little negro girl--called Thanky-ma'am because she was born on Thanksgiving day--and he wondered what the Turners would think if they could see him now--and the school-master. Where was the school-master? He began to be sorry that he hadn't gone to town to try to find him. Perhaps the Major would see him--but how would the Major know the school-master? He was sorry he hadn't gone. After dinner he started out-doors again. Earth and sky were radiant with light.
Great white tumbling clouds were piled high all around the horizon--and what a long length of sky it was in every direction down in the mountains, he had to look straight up, sometimes, to see the sky at all. Blackbirds chattered in the cedars as he went to the yard gate. The field outside was full of singing meadow-larks, and crows were cawing in the woods beyond. There had been a light shower, and on the dead top of a tall tree he saw a buzzard stretching his wings out to the sun. Past the edge of the woods, ran a little stream with banks that were green to the very water's edge, and Chad followed it on through the woods, over a worn rail-fence, along a sprouting wheat-field, out into a pasture in which sheep and cattle were grazing, and on, past a little hill, where, on the next low slope, sat a great white house with big white pillars, and Chad climbed on top of the stone fence--and sat, looking. On the portico stood a tall man in a slouch hat and a lady in black. At the foot of the steps a boy--a head taller than Chad perhaps--was rigging up a fishing-pole. A negro boy was leading a black pony toward the porch, and, to his dying day, Chad never forgot the scene that followed. For, the next moment, a little figure in a long riding-skirt stood in the big doorway and then ran down the steps, while a laugh, as joyous as the water running at his feet, floated down the slope to his ears. He saw the negro stoop, the little girl bound lightly to her saddle; he saw her black curls shake in the sunlight, again the merry laugh tinkled in his ears, and then, with a white plume nodding from her black cap, she galloped off and disappeared among the trees; and Chad sat looking after her--thrilled, mysteriously thrilled--mysteriously saddened, straightway. Would he ever see her again?
The tall man and the lady in black went in-doors, the negro disappeared, and the boy at the foot of the steps kept on rigging his pole. Several times voices sounded under the high creek bank below him, but, quick as his ears were, Chad did not hear them. Suddenly there was a cry that startled him, and something flashed in the sun over the edge of the bank and flopped in the grass.
"Snowball!" an imperious young voice called below the bank, "get that fish!"On the moment Chad was alert again--somebody was fishing down there--and he sprang from his perch and ran toward the fish just as a woolly head and a jet-black face peeped over the bank.
The pickaninny's eyes were stretched wide when he saw the strange figure in coonskin cap and moccasins running down on him, his face almost blanched with terror, and he loosed his hold and, with a cry of fright, rolled back out of sight. Chad looked over the bank. A boy of his own age was holding another pole, and, hearing the little darky slide down, he said, sharply:
"Get that fish, I tell you!"
"Look dar, Mars' Dan, look dar!"
The boy looked around and up and stared with as much wonder as his little body-servant, but with no fear.
"Howdye!" said Chad; but the white boy stared on silently.
"Fishin'?" said Chad.
"Yes," said Dan, shortly--he had shown enough curiosity and he turned his eyes to his cork. "Get that fish, Snowball," he said again.
"I'll git him fer ye," Chad said; and he went to the fish and unhooked it and came down the bank with the perch in one hand and the pole in the other.
"Whar's yo' string?" he asked, handing the pole to the still trembling little darky.
"I'll take it," said Dan, sticking the butt of his cane-pole in the mud. The fish slipped through his wet fingers, when Chad passed it to him, dropped on the bank, flopped to the edge of the creek, and the three boys, with the same cry, scrambled for it--Snowball falling down on it and clutching it in both his black little paws.
"Dar now!" he shrieked. "I got him!"
"Give him to me," said Dan.
"Lemme string him," said the black boy.
"Give him to me, I tell you!" And, stringing the fish, Dan took the other pole and turned his eyes to his corks, while the pickaninny squatted behind him and Chad climbed up and sat on the bank letting his legs dangle over. When Dan caught a fish he would fling it with a whoop high over the bank. After the third fish, the lad was mollified and got over his ill-temper. He turned to Chad.
"Want to fish?"
Chad sprang down the bank quickly.
