note, so to speak--you don't get such things as a gift--and how am I
going to go back on a debt like that? And you see, they're so poor,
and old, and friendless, and--' But I was ashamed by that time, and shut
him off, and somehow felt a new courage in me, and so I said, softly,
'We'll keep them--the Lord will provide.' He was glad, and started to
blurt out one of those over-confident speeches of his, but checked
himself in time, and said humbly, 'I will, anyway.' It was years and
years and years ago. Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet."

"But don't they do your housework?"

"Laws! The idea. They would if they could, poor old things, and perhaps
they think they do do some of it. But it's a superstition. Dan'l waits
on the front door, and sometimes goes on an errand; and sometimes you'll
see one or both of them letting on to dust around in here--but that's
because there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabble
into. And they're always around at meals, for the same reason. But the
fact is, we have to keep a young negro girl just to take care of them,
and a negro woman to do the housework and help take care of them."

"Well, they ought to be tolerably happy, I should think."

"It's no name for it. They quarrel together pretty much all the time
--most always about religion, because Dan'l's a Dunker Baptist and Jinny's
a shouting Methodist, and Jinny believes in special Providences and Dan'l
don't, because he thinks he's a kind of a free-thinker--and they play and
sing plantation hymns together, and talk and chatter just eternally and
forever, and are sincerely fond of each other and think the world of
Mulberry, and he puts up patiently with all their spoiled ways and
foolishness, and so--ah, well, they're happy enough if it comes to that.