The spring came early that year. When I descended from the train into the green and gold of the afternoon, I felt almost as if I were stepping back into some old summer. An ancient family carriage, drawn by two drowsy black horses with flowing tails, was waiting for me under a blossoming locust tree; and as soon as my foot touched the ground I was greeted affectionately by the coloured driver, who still called my mother “Miss Effie.” He was an imposing, ceremonious old man, very nearly as black as the horses, with a mass of white hair, which is unusual in a negro, and a gay bandanna handkerchief crossed over his chest. After an unconscionable wait for the mail, he brought the dilapidated leather pouch from the office, and tossed it on the floor of the carriage. A minute later, as he mounted over the wheel to his seat, he glanced back at me and remarked in an encouraging tone, “dar ain’ nuttin’ to hinder us now.” “How far is it to Whispering Leaves, Uncle Moab?” The old negro pondered the question while he flicked the reins over the broad swaying backs of the horses. He was so long in replying that, thinking he had forgotten to answer, I repeated the words more distinctly. “Can you tell me how far it is to Whispering Leaves?” At this he turned and looked back at me over his shoulder. “I reckon hit’s sum un like ten miles, or mebbe hit’s gwine on twelve,” he responded. “When did you leave there?” Again there was a long silence while we jogged sleepily out of the deeply shaded streets of the little village. “I ain’ been dar dis mawnin’, Miss Effie,” he answered at last. “Why, I thought you lived there?” I was so accustomed by this time to the slowness of his responses that I waited patiently until he brought out with hesitation, “I use’ ter.” “Then you are no longer the family coachman?” He shook his head above the bandanna handkerchief, and I could see his deep perplexity written in the brown creases of his neck. “Yas’m. I’se still de driver.” “But how can you be if you don’t live on the place?” “One er dem w’ite sarvants brungs de car’ige down ter de creek, en I tecks en drives hit along de road,” he replied. “I goes dar in de daytime,” he added impressively after a minute. “Dar’s some un um ain’ never set foot dar sence we all moved off, but I ain’ skeered er nuttin’, sweet Jesus, in de daytime.” “Do you mean that all the old servants moved off together?” “Yas’m. Ev’y last one un um. Dey’s all w’ite folks dar now.” “When did that happen?” But, as I was beginning to discover, time and space are the flimsiest abstractions in the imagination of the negro. “Hit wuz a long time ago. Miss Effie,” replied Uncle Moab. “Pell, he wa’n much mo’n a baby den. He wuz jes’ in dresses, en he’s done been in breeches now fur a pa’cel er Christmas times.” “Pell? Is that the child of the first Mrs. Blanton?”