She worries about that boy."
The Bunker children did not understand much about this until, on the
second day after their arrival, Phillis said:
"I'm going down to see mammy. Want to come?"
"Is--isn't your mammy here at home?" asked Vi. "Dora Blunt calls her
mother 'mammy'; but we don't."
"I've got a mother and a mammy too," explained the oldest Armatage girl.
"You-all come on and see her. She'll be glad to see you folks from the
North. She will ask you if you've seen her Ebenezer, for he went up
North. We used to all call him 'Sneezer,' and it made him awfully mad."
"Didn't he have any better name?" asked Russ.
"His full name is Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs. Of course, their
name isn't really Meiggs, like the plantation; but the darkies often
take the names of the places where they were born. Sneezer was a real
nice boy."
"He isn't dead, is he?" asked Russ.
"Reckon not," said Phillis. "But Mammy June is awful' worried about him.
She hasn't heard from him now for more than a year. So she doesn't know
what to think."
"But she has got other folks, hasn't she?" Rose asked.
"You'd think so! Grandchildren by the score," replied the older
Armatage girl, laughing. "Sneezer had lots of older brothers and
sisters, and they most all have married and live about here and have big
families. The grandchildren are running in and out of mammy's cabin all
the time.
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