"The last news is that the treaty will certainly be concluded and the open
navigation of the Mississippi assured to us forever. The major will load his
flatboats, drift down to New Orleans, sell those Spanish fops his tobacco
for its weight in gems, buy a mustang to ride home on, and if not robbed and
murdered by the land-pirates on the way, come back to you like an enormous
bumblebee from a clover-field, his thighs literally packed with gold."
"I am so glad, so glad, so glad!"
He drew from his pockets a roll.
"Here are papers for two months back. And now I've something else to tell
you. That is one of the things I came for"
As he said this, his manner, hitherto full of humour and vivacity, turned
grave, and his voice, sinking to a lower tone, became charged with
sweetness. It was the voice in which one refined and sincere soul confides
to another refined and sincere soul the secret of some new happiness that
has come to it.
But noticing the negro lad, who had paused in his work several paces off and
stood watching them, he said to her:
"May I have a drink?"
She turned to the negro:"Go to the spring-house and bring some water.
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