For some weeks she carried the kit with her everywhere, even when riding; it curled contentedly in a bag on her lap, and bid fair to be tame.
If Bertha rode out twice a day she paused four times by the mine to exhibit the growing tameness of her pet, or to recount fresh instances of the sagacity or prowess displayed by child or parent in her menagerie.
Durgan went up often to inspect the infant prodigies, and advise (altho he knew nothing) about their upbringing.
Durgan's own work lay exclusively in the "mineral kingdom," and he advanced from ignorance to some degree of skill in auguring from the bowels of the rock. Each day's work brought its keen daily interest, each night's sleep its quota of health and increasing cheerfulness.
When young Blount paid his next visit Durgan was in a mood better to appreciate his budget of gossip. He even contributed to it.
Adam had beaten his wife, and with good cause. Durgan had himself seen a strange nigger eating Adam's dinner, waited upon by Adam's wife. He found time to explain to his interested cousin that the nigger was both sickly and flashy--a mulatto, consumptive and dandified.
"The worst sort of trash. What could have brought him here? There is no such fellow belonging to the county, I'll swear."
"Adam's wife is not Eve, after all, I think. She can only be Lilith; and I wish the fates would change her for a superior." Durgan spoke musingly.
"At least I hope she'll have more sense than to take a tramping scamp nigger like that to the summit house," said Blount. "He's sure to be a thief."
"I'd chastise her myself if she did," said Durgan, smoking lazily.
"Ah, I'm glad you feel that way, for those ladies are a real benefit to the neighborhood, and, to tell the truth, it was on their account I came to you now. The General sent me."
Durgan smoked on. They were sitting late at the door of the hut. Darkness was falling like a mantle over all that lay below their precipice.
Blount began again. "These ladies from the North can't realize how little our mountain whites know of class distinctions. If you have only seen one thing, how can you appreciate the difference between that and another? The mountain men have lived in these hills for generations, knowing only themselves. You have to be born and bred in the brier bush to understand their ignorance and the self-importance that underlies their passive behavior."