She couldn't exackly
understan' why Mist' Peter should want to paint a ole nigger like
her, but if Peter Champneys had wanted to bury her alive in the
ground, with only her head sticking out, Emma would have known it
had to be all right, somehow. So she sat for weary hours, while
Peter made rough sketches, and tried out many theories, before he
settled down to work in dead earnest.
And presently Emma saw herself as it were alive on a square of
canvas, so alive that she was more than a bit afraid. She said it
looked like her own ha'nt, and Emma wasn't partial to ha'nts. There
she sat in her plain black dress and her plain white apron and
head-handkerchief, and her gold hoop ear-rings. On the table beside
her were the vegetables she was to prepare. She had forgotten work
for the time being. Emma projecked, one hand resting idly on the
table, the other on the great black cat in her lap. She looked at
you, with the wistfully animal look of a negro woman, who is loving,
patient, kind, long-suffering, imbued with a terrible patience, and
of a sound, sly, earthy humor; and who at the same time is
childishly credulous, full of dark passions, and with the fires of
savagery banked in her heart.
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