"Why--why--" Ricky faltered, "Charity Biglow said that you knew all
about the swamp--"
His tense position relaxed a fraction. "Oh, yo' know Miss Charity?"
"Yes. She showed us the picture she is painting, the one you are posing
for," Ricky went on.
"Miss Charity is a fine lady," he returned with conviction. He shifted
from one bare foot to the other. "Ah'll be goin' now." With no other
farewell he slipped over the side of the levee into his canoe and headed
out into midstream. Nor did he look back.
Lucy departed after dinner that evening to bed down her family before
returning with Letty-Lou to occupy one of the servant's rooms over the
side wing. Rupert had gone with her to interview Sam. Val gathered that
Sam had some notion of trying to reintroduce the growing of indigo, a
crop which had been forsaken for sugar-cane at the beginning of the
nineteenth century when a pest had destroyed the entire indigo crop of
that year all over Louisiana.
"Let's go out in the garden," suggested Ricky.
"What for?" asked her brother. "To provide a free banquet for
mosquitoes? No, thank you, let's stay here."
"You're lazy," she countered.
"You may call it laziness; I call it prudence," he answered.
"Well, I'm going anyway," she made a decision which brought Val
reluctantly to his feet. For mosquitoes or no mosquitoes, he was not
going to allow Ricky to be outside alone.
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