Sharp alternations of
violent action and self-indulgent repose; a hard run, and a long revel
after it: this is what over-much horse tends to animalize a man into. Such
antecedents may have helped to make little Dick Venner a self-willed,
capricious boy, and a rough playmate for Elsie.
Elsie was the wilder of the two. Old Sophy, who used to watch them with
those quick, animal-looking eyes of hers,--she was said to the the
granddaughter of a cannibal chief, and inherited the keen senses belonging
to all creatures which are hunted as game,--Old Sophy, who watched them in
their play and their quarrels, always seemed to be more afraid for the boy
than the girl. "Massa Dick! Massa Dick! don' you be too rough wi' dat gal!
She scratch you las' week, 'n' some day she bite you; 'n' if she bite you,
Massa Dick!"--Old Sophy nodded her head ominously, as if she could say a
great deal more; while, in grateful acknowledgment of her caution, Master
Dick put his two little fingers in the angles of his mouth, and his
forefingers on his lower eyelids, drawing upon these features until his
expression reminded her of something she vaguely recollected in her
infancy,--the face of a favorite deity executed in wood by an African
artist for her grandfather, brought over by her mother, and burned when she
became a Christian.
These two wild children had much in common. They loved to ramble together,
to build huts, to climb trees for nests, to ride the colts, to dance, to
race, and to play at boys' rude games as if both were boys.
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