This reply was satisfactory to the Captain, because he knew what it meant,—­that Rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done.

While Rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point.  It always vaguely embarrassed the Captain to correct Rose, and this increased his dignity.  Now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old negress to attention, so well they knew each other.

“By the way, Rose, in the future I must request you to use extraordinary precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture, or, in case of damage, I shall be forced to withhold an indemnification out of your pay.”

Eight or ten years ago, when the Captain first repeated this formula to his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word, “pay,” had built up lively hopes in Rose that the old gentleman was announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week.  Experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty interpretation.

She came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious.

“Whut is I bruk now?”

“My globe.”

The old woman turned about with more than usual innocence.

“Why, I ain’t tech yo’ globe!”

“I foresaw that,” agreed the Captain, with patient irony, “but in the future don’t touch it more carefully.  You bent its pivot the last time you refrained from handling it.”

“But I tell you I ain’t tech yo’ globe!” cried the negress, with the anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the satire leveled at her.

“I agree with you,” said the Captain, glad the affair was over.

This verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred up a tempest.

“But I tell you I ain’t bruk it!”

“That’s what I said.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she flared; “you says I ain’t, but when you says I ain’t, you means I is, an’ when you says I is, you means I ain’t.  Dat’s de sort o’ flapjack I’s wuckin’ fur!”

The woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew another long breath, glad it was over.  He really had little reason to quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it.  It sat in his study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long intervals by old Rose’s spiteful rag.

The Captain ate on placidly.  There had been a time when he was dubious about such scenes with Rose.  Once he felt it beneath his dignity as a Southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully.  He used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the first years of their entente had done so a number of times.  But he could get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light-bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make.  And, to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work for a dollar a week.