A. “Didn’t he whip you, Peter, to pay for it?”
P. “Whip us? No, Sir; I tell ye what ’tis, what he telled us ’bout the Devil, paid us more’n all the whippens in creation.”
A. “What was the big thing in the creek?”
P. “Why, I s’pose ’twas a _shark_; they used to come up the creek from the ocean.”
A. “Did you have much Religious Instruction?”
P. “Why, the old folks used to tell us we musn’t lie and steal and play sabba’day, for if we did, the _old boy_ would come and carry us off; and that was ’bout all the Religion I got from them, and all I knowed ’bout it, as long as I lived there.”
A. “What did you used to do when you got old enough to work?”
P. “Why, I lived in the house, and almost jist like a gal I knew when washin’-day come, and I’d out with the poundin’-barrel, and _on_ with the big kittle, and besides I used to do all the heavy cookin’ in the kitchen, and carry the dinner out to the field hands, and scrub, and scour knives, and all sich work.”
A. “Did you always used to have plenty to eat?”
P. “Oh? yis, Sir, I had the handlin’ of the victuals, and I had my _fill_, I tell ye.”
P. “Yis, Sir, I went one day when John was sick in his place, and that was the only day I ever went, in all my life, and I larned my A, B, C’s through, both ways, and never forgot ’em arter that.”
A. “Well, did you ever meet with any accidents?”
P. “Why, it’s a wonder I’m _alive_, I’ve had so many wonderful _escapes_. When I was ’bout ten year old, Master had a beautiful horse, only he was as wild as a pain’ter, and so one day when he was gone away, I and John gits him out, and he puts me on, and ties my legs under his belly, so I shouldn’t git flung off, and he run, and snorted, and broke the string, and pitched me off, and enemost broke my head, and if my skull hadn’t a been pretty thick, I guess he would; and I didn’t get well in almost six weeks.” Another thing I think on, Master had some of these ’ere old-fashioned long-eared and long-legged hogs, and he used to turn ’em out, like other folks, in a big wood nearby, and when they was growed up, fetch ’em and pen ’em up, and fat ’em; and so Master fetched home two that was dreadful wild, and they had tushes _so long_, and put ’em in a pen to fat. Well, his oldest son gits over in the pen one day to clean out the trough, and one on ’em put arter him, and oh! how he _bawled_, and run to git out; I heard him, and run and reached over the pen, and catched hold on him, and tried to lift him out; but the old feller had got hold of his leg, and took out a whole mouthful, and then let go; and I pulled like a good feller, and got him most over, but the old sarpent got hold of _my hand_, and bit it through and through, and there’s the scar yit.”