"Where is Snowball?" asked Madame Vance presently. "I wish to take you for a drive, and you are not dressed. That darky gets more shiftless every day. Where is she?"
"Hyar I is, missus." Snowball started up from behind a huge brocaded chair so quickly that she overturned a low table upon which stood a ewer that had contained orangeade. A crash followed, and the culprit stood looking at the fragments of the pitcher with consternation written over her face.
"Come here," and Madame's tone was so stern that Jeanne looked at her startled. "Forty lashes you shall have for this."
"Please'm, missus, lemme off dis time. Clar ter goodness I didn't go ter do it."
"Please, please," said Jeanne tearfully. She had heard the sound of whippings once or twice, but her aunt had always taken her away from the sound immediately, and her soul sickened at the thought of them. "I could not bear to have Snowball whipped, Cherie."
"She must be punished," said the lady harshly. "Such carelessness cannot be tolerated for a moment."
"But isn't there some other way?" cried Jeanne. "Do, do, dear Cherie, use some other way of punishment."
"Jeanne, I beg you to say no more. Am I not capable of administering the affairs of my own household? I want no Yankee notions down here. I understand what she needs."
Jeanne did not dare to reply. She had never before seen her aunt angry although she knew that the blacks were very much afraid of her. Snowball was taken down into the yard, and soon Jeanne heard the most fearful screams as if a human being was suffering the utmost that a mortal could endure of agony.
She could not bear the cries. She ran down the stairs and out into the yard where she beheld the girl stretched upon the ground on her face, her feet tied to a stake, her hands held by a black man, her back uncovered from her head to her heels. Her aunt was standing by directing a burly negro in his task of applying the lash.
The girl's back was covered with blood. Every stroke of the instrument of torture tore up the flesh in long dark ridges. With a cry of horror Jeanne caught the man's arm as it was about to descend for another stroke.
"Stop," she cried. "For the love of mercy, stop!"
"Go into the house, girl," commanded Madame Vance in terrible tones. "Who are you that you should interfere with my bidding? Have I not the right to do with my own slave as I wish? I want none of your abolitionism here."