ran like an antelope. Tom chased the traitor
home, and thus found out where he lived. He then
held a position at the gate for some time, daring the
enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces
at him through the window and declined. At last
the enemy’s mother appeared, and called Tom
a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away.
So he went away; but he said he “’lowed”
to “lay” for that boy.
He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed
cautiously in at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade,
in the person of his aunt; and when she saw the state
his clothes were in her resolution to turn his Saturday
holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine
in its firmness.
Saturday morning was come, and all the summer
world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life.
There was a song in every heart; and if the heart
was young the music issued at the lips. There
was cheer in every face and a spring in every step.
The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of
the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond
the village and above it, was green with vegetation
and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable
Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash
and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence,
and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled
down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence
nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and
existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his
brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated
the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant
whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent
of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box
discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate
with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing
water from the town pump had always been hateful work
in Tom’s eyes, before, but now it did not strike
him so. He remembered that there was company at
the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls
were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading
playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking.
And he remembered that although the pump was only
a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with
a bucket of water under an hour—and even
then somebody generally had to go after him.
Tom said:
“Say, Jim, I’ll fetch the water if you’ll
whitewash some.”
Jim shook his head and said:
“Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she
tole me I got to go an’ git dis water an’
not stop foolin’ roun’ wid anybody.
She say she spec’ Mars Tom gwine to ax me to
whitewash, an’ so she tole me go ‘long
an’ ’tend to my own business—she
’lowed she’d ’tend to de whitewashin’.”
“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim.
That’s the way she always talks. Gimme
the bucket—I won’t be gone only a
a minute. She won’t ever know.”
