“Don’ you try to make no fool of me, old man,” cried the planter.
“Oh, no,” said the other. “Oh, no; but you make a fool of yourself, ain’t it?” The dumfounded colonel stared; Charlie went on:
“Yass, Belles Demoiselles is more wort’ dan t’ree block like dis one. I pass by dare since two weeks. Oh, pretty Belles Demoiselles! De cane was wave in de wind, de garden smell like a bouquet, de white-cap was jump up and down on de river, seven _belles demoiselles_ was ridin’ on horses. ‘Pretty, pretty, pretty!’ says old Charlie. Ah, _Monsieur le père_, ’ow ’appy, ’appy, ’appy!”
“Yass,” he continued, the colonel still staring, “le Comte De Charleu have two famil’. One was low-down Choctaw, one was high-up _noblesse_. He give the low-down Choctaw dis old rat-hole; he give Belles Demoiselles to your gran’fozzer; and now you don’t be _satisfait_. What I’ll do wid Belles Demoiselles? She’ll break me in two years, yass. And what you’ll do wid old Charlie’s house, eh? You’ll tear her down and make you’se’f a blame’ old fool. I rather wouldn’t trade.”
The planter caught a big breath of anger, but Charlie went straight on:
“I rather wouldn’t, _mais_, I will do it for you--just de same, like _Monsieur le Comte_ would say, ‘Charlie, you old fool, I want to shange houses wid you.’”
So long as the colonel suspected irony he was angry, but as Charlie seemed, after all, to be certainly in earnest, he began to feel conscience-stricken. He was by no means a tender man, but his lately discovered misfortune had unhinged him, and this strange, undeserved, disinterested family fealty on the part of Charlie touched his heart. And should he still try to lead him into the pitfall he had dug? He hesitated. No, he would show him the place by broad daylight, and if he chose to overlook the “caving bank,” it would be his own fault. A trade’s a trade.
“Come,” said the planter--“come at my house to-night; to-morrow we look at the place before breakfast, and finish the trade.”
“Oh, because I got to come in town in the morning.”
“I don’t want,” said Charlie. “How I’m goin’ to come dere?”
“I git you a horse at the liberty-stable.”
“Well, anyhow, I don’t care; I’ll go.” And they went.
When they had ridden a long time, and were on the road darkened by hedges of Cherokee rose, the colonel called behind him to the “low-down” scion: