"Do, Maria."
" 'Spose haint got de 'terials, hey?"
"What do you want? Aunt Gary will give it to you." And I
begged Jem to go up again and prefer my request to her for the
new filling of Maria's bowl. Jem shrugged his shoulders, but
he went; and I suppose he made a good story of it; for he came
down with whatever was wanted — my aunt Gary was in a mood to
refuse me nothing then — and Maria went anew about the
business of beating and mixing and compounding.
There was great enjoyment in the kitchen. It was a time of
high festival, what with me and the egg supper. Merriment and
jocularity, a little tide-wave of social excitement, swelled
and broke on all sides of me; making a soft ripply play of fun
and repartee, difficult to describe, and which touched me as
much as it amused. It was very unlike the enjoyment of a set
of white people holding the same social and intellectual
grade. It was the manifestation of another race, less coarse
and animal in their original nature, more sensitive and more
demonstrative, with a strange touch of the luxurious and
refined, for a people whose life has had nothing to do with
luxury and whom refinement leaves on one side as quite beyond
its sphere.
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