"Her husband hurt and can't get to him to nurse him?" said the Colonel. "Well, well! That's pretty bad! I suppose we must take up a collection. Pass the hat, Gipsy!"
Hagar went to each of the country gentlemen, not with the suggested hat, but with her small palm held out, cupped. One by one they dropped into it quarter or dime, and each, as his coin tinkled down, had for the collector of bounty a drawling, caressing, humorous word. She thanked each gentleman as his bit of silver touched her hand and thanked with a sedate little manner of perfection. Manners at Gilead Balm were notoriously of a perfection.
Hagar took the money to the woman with the baby and gave it to her shyly, with a red spot in each cheek. She was careful to explain, when the woman began to stammer thanks, that it was from her grandfather and the other gentlemen and that they were anxious to help. She was a very honest little girl, with an honest wish to place credit where it belonged.
Back beside Miss Serena she sat and studied the moving green banks. The sun was almost down; there were wonderful golden clouds above the mountains. Willow and sycamore, on the river side of the canal, fell away. Across an emerald, marshy strip, you saw the bright, larger stream, mirror for the bright sky, and across it in turn you saw limestone cliffs topped with shaggy woods, and you heard the sound of picks against rock and saw another band of convicts, white and black, making the railroad. The packet-boat horn was blown again,--long, musical, somewhat mournfully echoing. The negro on the towpath, riding sideways on his mule, was singing still.
"Why is it that women don't have any money?"
Miss Serena closed her book. She glanced at the fields and the sky-line. "We shall be at Gilead Balm in ten minutes.--You ask too many questions, Hagar! It is a very bad habit to be always interrogating. It is quite distinctly unladylike."
At the Gilead Balm landing waited Captain Bob with a negro man to carry up to the house the Colonel's portmanteau and Miss Serena's small leather trunk. The packet-boat came in sight, white and slow as a deliberate swan, drew reflectively down the shining reach of water, and sidled to the landing. The Colonel shook hands with all the country gentlemen and bowed to the ladies, and the country gentlemen bowed to Miss Serena, who in turn bent her head and smiled, and the captain said good-bye, and the Colonel gave the attendant darky a quarter, and the woman with the baby came to that side of the boat and held for a moment the hand of the dark little girl, and then the gangplank was placed and the three Ashendynes passed over to the Colonel's land. The horn blew again, long, melodious; the negro on the towpath said, "Get up!" to the mule. Amid a waving of hands and a chorus of slow, agreeable voices the packet-boat glided from the landing and proceeded down the pink water between the willows and sycamores.