So then she started for the house,
leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we got
there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on
a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says:
"Now I can have a GOOD look at you; and, laws-a-me, I've been hungry for
it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last!
We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kep' you?--boat
get aground?"
"Yes'm--she--"
"Don't say yes'm--say Aunt Sally. Where'd she get aground?"
I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the boat
would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on instinct;
and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards Orleans.
That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names of bars
down that way. I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the
one we got aground on--or--Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:
"It warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little. We
blowed out a cylinder-head."
"Good gracious! anybody hurt?"
"No'm. Killed a nigger."
"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago
last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old
Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man.
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