Miss Lou | Page 3

to think I can be subdued like one of his skittish horses."
"You HAB got a heap on yo' min", Miss Lou, you sho'ly hab. You sut'ny t'ink too much for a young gyurl."
"I'm eighteen, yet uncle and aunt act toward me in some ways as if I were still ten years old. How can I help think ing? The thoughts come. You're a great one to talk against thinking. Uncle says you don't do much else, and that your thoughts are just like the smoke of your pipe."
Aun' Jinkey bridled indignantly at first, but, recollecting herself, said quietly: "I knows my juty ter ole mars'r en'll say not'n gin 'im. He bring you up en gib you a home, Miss Lou. You must reckermember dat ar."
"I'm in a bad mood, I suppose, but I can't help my thoughts, and it's kind of a comfort to speak them out. If he only WOULD give me a home and not make it so much like a prison! Uncle's honest, though, to the backbone. On my eighteenth birthday he took me into his office and formally told me about my affairs. I own that part of the plantation on the far side of the run. He has kept all the accounts of that part separate, and if it hadn't been for the war I'd have been rich, and he says I will be rich when the war is over and the South free. He said he had allowed so much for my bringing up and for my education, and that the rest was invested, with his own money, in Confederate bonds. That is all right, and I respect uncle for his downright integrity, but he wants to manage me just as he does my plantation. He wishes to produce just such crops of thoughts as he sows the seeds of, and he would treat my other thoughts like weeds, which must be hoed out, cut down and burned. Then you see he hasn't GIVEN me a home, and I'm growing to be a woman. If I am old enough to own land, am I never to be old enough to own myself?"
"Dar now, Miss Lou, you raisin' mo' questions dan I kin tink out in a yeah."
"There's dozens more rising in my mind and I can't get rid of them. Aunt keeps my hands knitting and working for the soldiers, and I like to do it. I'd like to be a soldier myself, for then I could go somewhere and do and see something. Life then wouldn't be just doing things with my hands and being told to think exactly what an old gentleman and an old lady think. Of course our side is right in this war, but how can I believe with uncle that nearly all the people in the North are low, wicked and vile? The idea that every Northern soldier is a monster is preposterous to me. Uncle forgets that he has had me taught in United States history. I wish some of them would just march by this out-of-the-way place, for I would like to see for myself what they are like."
"Dar, dar, Miss Lou, you gittin' too bumptious. You like de fus' woman who want ter know too much,"
"No," said the girl, her blue eyes becoming dark and earnest, "I want to know what's true, what's right. I can't believe that uncle and aunt's narrow, exclusive, comfortless religion came from heaven; I can't believe that God agrees with uncle as to just what a young girl should do and think and be, but uncle seems to think that the wickedest thing I can do is to disagree with him and aunt. Uncle forgets that there are books in his library, and books make one think. They tell of life very different from mine. Why, Aun' Jinkey, just think what a lonely girl I am! You are about the only one I can talk to. Our neighbors are so far away and we live so secluded that I scarcely have acquaintances of my own age. Aunt thinks young girls should be kept out of society until the proper time, and that time seems no nearer now than ever. If uncle and aunt loved me, it would be different, but they have just got a stiff set of ideas about their duty to me and another set about my duty to them. Why, uncle laughed at a kitten the other day because it was kittenish, but he has always wanted me to behave with the solemnity of an old cat. Oh, dear! I'm SO tired. I wish something WOULD happen."
"Hit brokes me all up ter year you talk so, honey, en I bless de Lawd 'tain' likely any ting gwinter hap'n in dese yere parts. De wah am ragin'