The house now resolved itself into a committee of the whole, to consider the accommodations and arrangements for the meeting.

“What we’s to do for cheers, now, I declar I don’t know,” said Aunt Chloe.  As the meeting had been held at Uncle Tom’s weekly, for an indefinite length of time, without any more “cheers,” there seemed some encouragement to hope that a way would be discovered at present.

“Old Uncle Peter sung both de legs out of dat oldest cheer, last week,” suggested Mose.

“You go long!  I’ll boun’ you pulled ’em out; some o’ your shines,” said Aunt Chloe.

“Well, it’ll stand, if it only keeps jam up agin de wall!” said Mose.

“Den Uncle Peter mus’n’t sit in it, cause he al’ays hitches when he gets a singing.  He hitched pretty nigh across de room, t’ other night,” said Pete.

“Good Lor! get him in it, then,” said Mose, “and den he’d begin, ’Come saints—­and sinners, hear me tell,’ and den down he’d go,”—­and Mose imitated precisely the nasal tones of the old man, tumbling on the floor, to illustrate the supposed catastrophe.

“Come now, be decent, can’t ye?” said Aunt Chloe; “an’t yer shamed?”

Mas’r George, however, joined the offender in the laugh, and declared decidedly that Mose was a “buster.”  So the maternal admonition seemed rather to fail of effect.

“Well, ole man,” said Aunt Chloe, “you’ll have to tote in them ar bar’ls.”

“Mother’s bar’ls is like dat ar widder’s, Mas’r George was reading ’bout, in de good book,—­dey never fails,” said Mose, aside to Peter.

“I’m sure one on ’em caved in last week,” said Pete, “and let ’em all down in de middle of de singin’; dat ar was failin’, warnt it?”

During this aside between Mose and Pete, two empty casks had been rolled into the cabin, and being secured from rolling, by stones on each side, boards were laid across them, which arrangement, together with the turning down of certain tubs and pails, and the disposing of the rickety chairs, at last completed the preparation.

“Mas’r George is such a beautiful reader, now, I know he’ll stay to read for us,” said Aunt Chloe; “’pears like ’t will be so much more interestin’.”

George very readily consented, for your boy is always ready for anything that makes him of importance.

The room was soon filled with a motley assemblage, from the old gray-headed patriarch of eighty, to the young girl and lad of fifteen.  A little harmless gossip ensued on various themes, such as where old Aunt Sally got her new red headkerchief, and how “Missis was a going to give Lizzy that spotted muslin gown, when she’d got her new berage made up;” and how Mas’r Shelby was thinking of buying a new sorrel colt, that was going to prove an addition to the glories of the place.  A few of the worshippers belonged to families hard by, who had got permission to attend, and who brought in various choice scraps of information, about the sayings and doings at the house and on the place, which circulated as freely as the same sort of small change does in higher circles.