CHAPTER X. LITTLE POMP

There was a hurried good-by at the depot.

“Kiss the children for me, Mary,” said her husband.

“You will write very soon?” pleaded Mrs. Frost.

“At the very first opportunity.”

“All aboard!” shouted the conductor.

With a shrill scream the locomotive started.

Frank and his mother stood on the platform watching the receding train till it was quite out of sight, and then in silence our young hero assisted his mother into the carryall and turned the horse’s head homeward.

It was one of those quiet October mornings, when the air is soft and balmy as if a June day had found its way by mistake into the heart of autumn.  The road wound partly through the woods.  The leaves were still green and abundant.  Only one or two showed signs of the coming change, which in the course of a few weeks must leave them bare and leafless.

“What a beautiful day!” said Frank, speaking the words almost unconsciously.

“Beautiful indeed!” responded his mother.  “On such a day as this the world seems too lovely for war and warlike passions to be permitted to enter it.  When men might be so happy, why need they stain their hands with each other’s blood?”

Frank was unprepared for an answer.  He knew that it was his father’s departure which led his mother to speak thus.  He wished to divert her mind, if possible.

Circumstances favored his design.

They had accomplished perhaps three-quarters of the distance home when, as they were passing a small one-story building by the roadside, a shriek of pain was heard, and a little black boy came running out of the house, screaming in affright:  “Mammy’s done killed herself.  She’s mos’ dead!”

He ran out to the road and looked up at Mrs. Frost, as if to implore assistance.

“That’s Chloe’s child,” said Mrs. Frost.  “Stop the horse, Frank; I’ll get out and see what has happened.”

Chloe, as Frank very well knew, was a colored woman, who until a few months since had been a slave in Virginia.  Finally she had seized a favorable opportunity, and taking the only child which the cruel slave system had left her, for the rest had been sold South, succeeded in making her way into Pennsylvania.  Chance had directed her to Rossville, where she had been permitted to occupy, rent free, an old shanty which for some years previous had been uninhabited.  Here she had supported herself by taking in washing and ironing.  This had been her special work on the plantation where she had been born and brought up, and she was therefore quite proficient in it.  She found no difficulty in obtaining work enough to satisfy the moderate wants of herself and little Pomp.

The latter was a bright little fellow, as black as the ace of spades, and possessing to the full the mercurial temperament of the Southern negro.  Full of fun and drollery, he attracted plenty of attention when he came into the village, and earned many a penny from the boys by his plantation songs and dances.