Is Miss Lyn along?"
"She suttinly am," Mammy Thomas emphatically asserted. "Yo' doan catch
dis chile a-mosyin' obeh dese yeah plains by huh lonesome. Since dey
done brought Miss Lyn's paw in an' planted him, she say dey ain't no use
foh huh to stay in dis yeah redcoat country no longer; so we all packed
up an' sta'ted back foh de lan' ob de free."
MacRae, I am sure, was no more than half through his meal. But he
swallowed the coffee in his cup, and tossed his eating-implements into
the cook's wash-pan.
"I'll go with you, Mammy," he told her. "I want to see Miss Lyn myself."
"Jes' a minute, Marse Go'don," she said. "Ah's got to git some wa'm
watah f'om dis yeah Mr. Cook."
The cook signaled her to help herself from the kettle that bubbled over
the fire, and she filled her bucket and disappeared, chattering volubly,
MacRae at her heels.
I finished my supper more deliberately. There was no occasion for me to
gobble my food and rush off to talk with Lyn Rowan. MacRae, I suspected,
would be inclined to monopolize her for the rest of the evening. So I
ate leisurely, and when done crawled under the wagon beside Piegan Smith
and gave myself up to cigarettes and meditation, while over his pipe
Piegan expressed a most unflattering opinion of the weather.
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