136 Success with Small Fruits. 



Harrison, his associate overseer, unites more discretion with his force, 

 and he gave us an example of this fact. As we were strolling about, we 

 found, seated at the end of the strawberry rows, a group consisting of two 

 young women and two children, with a colored man standing near. They 

 had been picking in partnership, we were informed by one of the young 

 women, who was smoking a pipe, and who replied to our questions, 

 scarcely taking the trouble to look up. She was about half white, and her 

 face was singularly expressive of sensuousness and indolent recklessness. 



"This man is your husband ?" I suggested. 



"No, he 's only my brudder. My ole man is picking on anoder farm," 

 she drawled out, between the whiffs of her pipe. 



" I should think you and your husband would work together," I 

 ventured. 



"We doesn't. He goes about his business and I goes about mine," 

 she remarked, with languid complacency. 



Here is a character, I thought, as we passed on, the very embodi- 

 ment of a certain kind of willfulness. She would not resist or chafe at 

 authority, but, with an easy, good-natured, don't care expression, would 

 do as she pleased " though the heavens fell." A little later there was a 

 heavy rumble of thunder in the west, and we met again the young woman 

 whose marital relations resembled those of many of her fashionable sisters 

 at the North. She was leading her small band from the field. The 

 prospective shower was her excuse for going, but laziness the undoubted 

 cause. Harrison, like a vigilant watch-dog, spied them and blustered up, 

 never for a moment doubting that she would yield to his authority. 



But he had met his match. She merely looked at him with her slow, 

 quiet, indolent smile, in which there was not the faintest trace of irreso- 

 lution or fear, and he knew that the moment he stepped out of the way, 

 she would pass on. His loud expostulations and threats soon ceased. 

 What could he do with that laughing woman, who no doubt had been a 

 slave, but was now emancipated a trifle too completely ? He might as 

 well try to stop a sluggish tide with his hands. It would ooze away from 

 him inevitably. The instincts of this people are quick. Harrison knew 

 he was defeated, and his only anxiety now was to retreat in a way that 

 would save appearances. 



" I'se a-gwine home, M's'r Harrison/' she said quietly. " You don't 

 catch us gittin' wet ag'in." 



" Oh, well, if you is 'fraid ob gittin' wet, s'pose I'll habe to let you off 

 jus' dis once," he began pompously ; and here, fortunately, he saw a man 

 leaving the field in the distance. There was a subject with which he 



