So that
existence to Ellen--the pleasant part of it, anyhow--meant a
great deal of Ma'Lou, and there was scarcely an object in her
room, a game or a pursuit of her days, that was not associated
with the brown girl. The pair grew up in a companionship closer
than that of some born sisters.
The mere fact of this intimacy was not regarded by the Kendricks
with any disfavor whatever. Scott and Fanny both had played with
negro children, both had been reared by negro mammies. Neither
realized that conditions were changed, that the negroes with whom
they had associated were no longer an enslaved people, hopeless
of any equality, nor that, with the coming of freedom, and still
more with the growing ferment among the blacks, such association
was different from the intimacy of slavery days.
And Ezra Jackson's wife watched jealously that the preponderance
of gifts and favors should be always on her child's side. If any
present were given Mary Louise in the Kendrick house, her mother
always retorted instantly, as one might say, with something
better or handsomer. Mrs. Kendrick was a slow woman, and such a
point would naturally have been obscure to her; yet she finally
came to be aware of the fact, and at last it vexed her a little.
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