Mr. Caldwell himself hurried forward; and the whole store, clerks and customers, stood at attention, for Miss Taylor was yet new to the county.
She bought a few trifles and then approached her main business.
"My brother wants some information about the county, Mr. Caldwell, and I am only a teacher, and do not know much about conditions here."
"Ah! where do you teach?" asked Mr. Caldwell. He was certain he knew the teachers of all the white schools in the county. Miss Taylor told him. He stiffened slightly but perceptibly, like a man clicking the buckles of his ready armor, and two townswomen who listened gradually turned their backs, but remained near.
"Yes--yes," he said, with uncomfortable haste. "Any--er--information--of course--" Miss Taylor got out her notes.
"The leading land-owners," she began, sorting the notes searchingly, "I should like to know something about them."
"Well, Colonel Cresswell is, of course, our greatest landlord--a high-bred gentleman of the old school. He and his son--a worthy successor to the name--hold some fifty thousand acres. They may be considered representative types. Then, Mr. Maxwell has ten thousand acres and Mr. Tolliver a thousand."
Miss Taylor wrote rapidly. "And cotton?" she asked.
"We raise considerable cotton, but not nearly what we ought to; nigger labor is too worthless."
"Oh! The Negroes are not, then, very efficient?"
"Efficient!" snorted Mr. Caldwell; at last she had broached a phase of the problem upon which he could dilate with fervor. "They're the lowest-down, ornriest--begging your pardon--good-for-nothing loafers you ever heard of. Why, we just have to carry them and care for them like children. Look yonder," he pointed across the square to the court-house. It was an old square brick-and-stucco building, sombre and stilted and very dirty. Out of it filed a stream of men--some black and shackled; some white and swaggering and liberal with tobacco-juice; some white and shaven and stiff. "Court's just out," pursued Mr. Caldwell, "and them niggers have just been sent to the gang--young ones, too; educated but good for nothing. They're all that way."
Miss Taylor looked up a little puzzled, and became aware of a battery of eyes and ears. Everybody seemed craning and listening, and she felt a sudden embarrassment and a sense of half-veiled hostility in the air. With one or two further perfunctory questions, and a hasty expression of thanks, she escaped into the air.