Still old Jenny went in and out of the house to kitchen and kitchen to house, carrying wood, water, meat, bread, sauce, sweetmeats, arranging the table for supper, replenishing the fire, lighting the candles, letting down the curtains—­and trying to make everything cozy and comfortable for the reassembling of the fireside circle.  Poor old Jenny had passed so much of her life in the family with “the white folks,” that all her sympathies went with them—­and on the state of their spiritual atmosphere depended all her cheerfulness and comfort; and now the cool, distant, sorrowful condition of the members of the little family circle—­“ebery single mudder’s son and darter ob ’em, superamblated off to derself like pris’ners in a jailhouse”—­as she said—­depressed her spirits very much.  Jenny’s reaction from depression was always quite querulous.  And toward the height of the storm, there was a reaction and she grew very quarrelsome.

“Sam’s waystin’[A] roun’ in dere,” said Jenny, as she thrust her feet into the kitchen fire, before carrying in the urn; “Sam’s waystin’, I tells you all good! all werry quiet dough—­no noise, no fallin’ out, no ‘sputin’ nor nothin’—­all quiet as de yeth jest afore a debbil ob a storm—­nobody in de parlor ’cept ‘tis Marse Paul, settin’ right afore de parlor fire, wid one long leg poked east and toder west, wid the boots on de andirons like a spread-eagle! lookin’ as glum as if I owed him a year’s sarvice, an’ nebber so much as a-sayin’, ’Jenny, you poor old debbil, ain’t you a-cold?’ an’ me coming in ebery minnit wid the icicles a-jinglin’ ‘roun’ my linsey-woolsey skurts, like de diamonds on de Wirgin Mary’s Sunday gown.  But Sam’s waystin’ now, I tells you all good.  Lors Gemini, what a storm!

[Footnote A:  Waysting—­Going up and down.]

“I ’members of no sich since dat same storm as de debbil come in to fetch ole marse’s soul—­dis berry night seven year past, an’ he carried of him off all in a suddint whiff! jist like a puff of win’.  An’ no wonder, seein’ how he done traded his soul to him for money!

“An’ Sam’s here ag’in to-night! dunno who he’s come arter! but he’s here, now, I tells you all good!” said Jenny, as she took up the urn to carry it into the parlor.

When she got there she could scarcely get to the fire; Paul took up the front.  His immobility and unconsciousness irritated Jenny beyond silent endurance.

“I tell you all what,” she said, “I means to ’sign my sitewation! ’deed me!  I can’t kill myself for dem as wouldn’t even care ’nough for me to have a mass said for de ‘pose o’ my soul.”

“What do you mean?” asked Paul, angrily, for confinement, solitude, bad weather, and anxiety, had combined, to make him querulous, too.

“I means how ef yer doesn’t have a kivered way made from de house to de kitchen an’ back ag’in, I gwine give up waitin’ on de table, now min’ I tell yer, ‘deed me! an’ now ef you likes, yer may jes’ go an’ tell Marse Rooster.”