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p to be no gentleman."
"Oh, I didn't know that. When I hired you to come work for my cousins, I understood, of course, that you were a gentleman. Otherwise I would not have considered you for a moment. Do you suppose I would have any one come around these ladies who are everything in the world to me if he were not a gentleman?"
"There's that nigger, Oscar! We uns is as good as he is. He ain't no gentleman."
"He is as good a gentleman as there is in the land. He came up here with these young ladies whom he has known ever since they were babies rather than desert them when he thought he might be needed. I have never known Oscar to say a coarse word or do an ungentle act. I, too, have known him all my life. He is a good, clean man, inside and out, and would cut off his hand before he would scare a helpless woman."
"'Twan't nothin' but a nigger 'ooman!"
"You say nothing but a negro as though that were the lowest thing in the world, and still just now you spoke with a certain pride of being as good as one. Now I tell you, you are not as good as one unless you act better. You have a long line of free English ancestors behind you and these poor things are but recently out of slavery. Now you come with me and take your punishment if you want to stay and work for this camp."
Josh looked rather startled. Did this young gentleman mean to beat him, and all because he had put a hornet's nest under a silly colored girl's bed? Josh had received many a licking from his raw-boned mother, and when Aunt Mandy whipped, she whipped. He was not afraid of the physical hurt of a beating, but that line of English ancestors of which Lewis had spoken all rebelled in this, their little descendant, against being beaten by any one who was no blood kin.
"March!" said Lewis.
Well, if he were to go to execution like a soldier, he could stand it better. With flashing eyes and head well up, Josh walked on by Lewis's side.
The camp builders had fashioned, with great ingenuity, a shower bath to one side of the kitchen and store-room under the pavilion. The mountain spring was dug out into a very respectable reservoir, and this was piped down to furnish running water in the kitchen and a strong shower in this rough lean-to of a bath-room. The water was cold and clear and the fall was so great that the spray felt like needles. The young men reveled in this vigorous bathing and the Carter girls had taken a go at it and one and all pronounced it grand.
Josh looked upon this enthusiasm on the subject of mere bathing as affectation. Miss Somerville might have had the same attitude of mind towards persons who liked Limberger cheese or read Sanskrit for pleasure.
Lewis directed his prisoner to this bath-house.
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