Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/396

 the river and sold; or at least that she should be set to work in the field; and especially that she should have a sound flogging for her insolence; but Mr Thomas would consent to neither. Mrs Thomas was welcome to flog aunt Emma as much as she pleased. The late Mrs Thomas did sometimes use the cowskin on her, he believed; but during the six years that she had been housekeeper for him, he never had had occasion to do it, and he shouldn't begin now. The most he could be persuaded to do, was to put her out of Mrs Thomas's sight by hiring her out somewhere in the neighborhood, — poor Mrs Thomas complaining, in a sort of prophetic' spirit, that he wanted to keep her near by, when she, his poor wife, was dead and gone, as she soon should be, to have her for his housekeeper again.

But, though the black housekeeper was thus at last got rid of, the black cook proved a more formidable enemy. Aunt Dinah's skill in cookery was by no means contemptible, and Mr Thomas, who was something of an epicure, had become so accustomed to her particular dishes, that nobody else could suit him. All poor Mrs Thomas's efforts to dislodge aunt Dinah from the kitchen proved, in consequence, unavailing. She had nothing to do — so Mr Thomas told her — but to keep out of the kitchen, and let aunt Dinah alone. But that Mrs Thomas could not do. She had a great passion for bustling, managing, meddling, fretting and scolding, and scarcely a day passed without an encounter between her and aunt Dinah, whom she accused, not altogether without reason, of not having the slightest idea either of order or neatness — accusations which aunt Dinah was accustomed. to retort by a sort of growling observations to herself, that poor folks couldn't be expected to understand or duly value the kitchen management of quality cooks.

So far did this feud go, that Mrs Thomas declared at last her apprehension of being poisoned, and for some months would eat nothing except what Cassy prepared for her, with her own hands; though