At this moment, Candace reappeared at the door, her butterfly turban somewhat deranged with the violence of her prostration, giving a whimsical air to her portly person.

“I want ye all to know,” she said, with a clearing-up snuff, “dat it’s my will an’ pleasure to go right on doin’ my work jes’ de same; an’, Missis, please, I’ll allers put three eggs in de crullers, now; an’ I won’t turn de wash-basin down in de sink, but hang it jam-up on de nail; an’ I won’t pick up chips in a milkpan, ef I’m in ever so big a hurry;—­I’ll do eberyting jes’ as ye tells me.  Now you try me an’ see ef I won’t!”

Candace here alluded to some of the little private wilfulnesses which she had always obstinately cherished as reserved rights, in pursuing domestic matters with her mistress.

“I intend,” said Mr. Marvyn, “to make the same offer to your husband, when he returns from work to-night.”

“Laus, Mass’r,—­why, Cato he’ll do jes’ as I do,—­dere a’n’t no kind o’ need o’ askin’ him.  ’Course he will.”

A smile passed round the circle, because between Candace and her husband there existed one of those whimsical contrasts which one sometimes sees in married life.  Cato was a small-built, thin, softly-spoken negro, addicted to a gentle chronic cough; and, though a faithful and skilful servant, seemed, in relation to his better half, much like a hill of potatoes under a spreading apple-tree.  Candace held to him with a vehement and patronizing fondness, so devoid of conjugal reverence as to excite the comments of her friends.

“You must remember, Candace,” said a good deacon to her one day, when she was ordering him about at a catechizing, “you ought to give honor to your husband; the wife is the weaker vessel.”

“I de weaker vessel?” said Candace, looking down from the tower of her ample corpulence on the small, quiet man whom she had been fledging with the ample folds of a worsted comforter, out of which his little head and shining bead-eyes looked, much like a blackbird in a nest,—­“I de weaker vessel?  Umph!”

A whole-woman’s-rights’ convention could not have expressed more in a day than was given in that single look and word.  Candace considered a husband as a thing to be taken care of,—­a rather inconsequent and somewhat troublesome species of pet, to be humored, nursed, fed, clothed, and guided in the way that he was to go,—­an animal that was always losing off buttons, catching colds, wearing his best coat every day, and getting on his Sunday hat in a surreptitious manner for week-day occasions; but she often condescended to express it as her opinion that he was a blessing, and that she didn’t know what she should do, if it wasn’t for Cato.  In fact, he seemed to supply her that which we are told is the great want in woman’s situation,—­an object in life.  She sometimes was heard expressing herself very energetically in disapprobation of the conduct of one of her sable friends, named Jinny Stiles, who, after being presented with her own freedom, worked several years to buy that of her husband, but became afterwards so disgusted with her acquisition that she declared she would “neber buy anoder nigger.”