Mrs. Willoughby took a survey of the offices last.  Here she found, already established, the two Plinies, with Mari’, the sister of the elder Pliny, Bess, the wife of the younger, and Mony—­alias Desdemona—­ a collateral of the race, by ties and affinities that garter-king-at-arms could not have traced genealogically; since he would have been puzzled to say whether the woman was the cousin, or aunt, or step-daughter of Mari’, or all three.  All the women were hard at work, Bess singing in a voice that reached the adjoining forest.  Mari’—­this name was pronounced with a strong emphasis on the last syllable, or like Maria, without the final vowel—­Mari’ was the head of the kitchen, even Pliny the elder standing in salutary dread of her authority; and her orders to her brother and nephew were pouring forth, in an English that was divided into three categories; the Anglo-Saxon, the Low Dutch, and the Guinea dialect; a medley that rendered her discourse a droll assemblage of the vulgar and the classical.

“Here, niggers,” she cried, “why you don’t jump about like Paus dance?  Ebbery t’ing want a hand, and some want a foot.  Plate to wash, crockery to open, water to b’ile, dem knife to clean, and not’ing missed.  Lord, here’s a madam, and ’e whole kitchen in a diffusion.”

“Well, Mari’,” exclaimed the captain, good-naturedly, “here you are, scolding away as if you had been in the place these six months, and knew all its faults and weaknesses.”

“Can’t help a scold, master, in sich a time as dis—­come away from dem plates, you Great Smash, and let a proper hand take hold on ’em.”

Here we ought to say, that captain Willoughby had christened Bess by the sobriquet of Great Smash, on account of her size, which fell little short of two hundred, estimated in pounds, and a certain facility she possessed in destroying crockery, while ’Mony went by the milder appellation of “Little Smash;” not that bowls or plates fared any better in her hands, but because she weighed only one hundred and eighty.

“Dis is what I tell ’em, master,” continued Mari’, in a remonstrating, argumentative sort of a tone, with dogmatism and respect singularly mingled in her manner—­“Dis, massa, just what I tell ’em all.  I tell ’em, says I, this is Hunter Knoll, and not All_bon_ny—­here no store—­no place to buy t’ing if you break ’em; no good woman who know ebbery t’ing, to tell you where to find t’ing, if you lose him.  If dere was only good woman, dat somet’ing; but no fortun’- teller out here in de bushes—­no, no—­when a silber spoon go, here, he go for good and all—­Goody, massy”—­staring at something in the court—­“what he call dat, sa?”

“That—­oh! that is only an Indian hunter I keep about me, to bring us game—­you’ll never have an empty spit, Mari’, as long as he is with us.  Fear nothing; he will not harm you.  His name is Nick.”

“De Ole Nick, massa?”