Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/174

170 The next thing that happened firmly established Philip's supremacy in the minds of the colored contingent. It was the custom at The Hedges to cure great quantities of meat—much more than was needed by the family—because it was a well-known fact that Mam' Peachy's descendants must be fed, and when they needed a piece of salt pork, a fat back or maybe a shoulder, several young men were detailed to go over to the smokehouse belonging to Rolfe Bolling and simply help themselves. Mam' Peachy had instructed them for years in the ethics of this lifting. They must never take hams—unless for some special occasion. Shoulders, jowls, and fat backs were good enough for the likes of them. To be sure, the smokehouse was locked and the key kept carefully by the mistress, but keys and locks were small matters to Mam' Peachy's descendants.

It is not well for man to live on salt pork alone, so there were times when Elizabeth's henhouse was visited instead of the smokehouse. The theft of her poultry was the thing that distressed her even more than the loss of the pork, as the money she made from eggs and chickens was all that she had ever had to call her own.

Philip had been home only a few days when he installed electric burglar alarms on the