He { 303}went to market every day with his mistress, to show her how to select, as he confidentially informed his companions---"Yer see she's only a chile, not far frum my age (he was sixteen, she was nineteen) and isn't 'sperienced in de tricks of dem ar market folks, so I goes along and helps her."
We had been teasing for a dish of roast goose for a long time, so Percy and his mistress started just after breakfast and made a tour of the stalls. She selected a huge, but plump-looking white fowl, whose snowy feathers attracted her attention. She was quite ready to accept Percy's assurance that "dat ar fowl will make seberal good meals." The bird was purchased, and Percy slung it over his shoulder, while it squawked most horribly as mistress and boy went down the length of the market, greeted at every step by the grinning colored folks, who wished them "good luck wid dat ar young bird!" while some were anxious to know "whar yo' get dat snow bird, honey?" accompanied with many fervent hopes that it would "eat like cream." When the fowl reached the home of Percy's mistress, she nearly died with chagrin to find that what she preferred for its snowy plumage, thinking it an evidence of youth and beauty, proved to be a gander whose tough old skin Charlie assured her no amount of heat could penetrate. So when she slyly opened the gate, and bade him wander forth, he did so without delay.
Percy pretended much sympathy for her discomfiture, but she lost faith in all humanity after the goose episode, and deputed the marketing to her brother and the boy, who kindly relieved her.
But Percy was not entirely a trifler, as a few weeks after proved. One night when all were sleeping and the night was full of beauty, a little flame, so fine it was scarce observable, shot up into the room where the master and mistress reposed. It grew larger, as it danced across the floor, and curled up over the windows, drawn by the night breeze that played there. Now it seized the curtains of the bed, and still they knew nothing of the danger. And now the flames burst forth, lighting up the whole room, A feeling of suffocation, a frightened cry, and they awake, { 304}but the smoke is thick and lurid, they are blinded and dazed. Where is the window--how can they find the door? They are silent from fear, while the flames leap nearer and nearer.