"I was not miserly, Mrs. Jefferson. I was thrifty. I didn't mind spending money on good, useful things. As far as food and clothes were concerned, I wanted my Momma to be well off. I bought her a good bed and a sharp, handsome knife or other such kitchen tools."
Esther nodded in agreement. "Anyone with good eyes can usually tell if a person's house is on the way up or on the way down. With them Jefferson's it was clear that they was on the way up, although this was not showed through vanity, but rather through cleanliness and care. The farmers derived great pleasure from this and wished Jeremias well with all their hearts, for he thrived not through dishonesty, but through good honest hard work."
"And young lady," began Jeremias. "During all this time I didn't leave off prayin' and never did any sort of business on Sundays. Every Sunday I went to church in the morning and in the afternoon read a chapter from the Good Book to my Momma, whose eyes were goin' on her."
Esther picked up the flow with her own twist. "Then later on, after his Momma went to bed, he would take special delight of takin' out his money, countin' it, examinin' it and calculatin' how much it had increased and dreamin' about how much more it would grow, and so on. I always thought that was kinda unseemly for a God fearin' man."
"There were some very nice pieces in that pile, Mrs. Jefferson. In fact, mostly good silver coins. I was a trader, and did real good at it too, and I gladly accepted copper coins now and again, but I didn't hang on to them for long. Heck, a penny here and there could be blown away with just a breath in the wrong direction. I took pleasure in them new silver pieces, mostly them handsome silver dollars with that noble bald eagle."
"When he got a hold of one of them, it made him cheerful for days at a time," said Esther as she exchanged loving glances with her husband. "But he had his bad days."
"Such as?" I prompted was gently as I could.
"Well, it was a real sad day for me when I lost a customer."
"Or when he just thought he had."
"Or when a new cook who was new to the area and didn't know nothin' about the well-known Egg Man and then yelled from the top of the stairs, Don't need no eggs today, boy."
The old woman noticed the confused look on the young woman's face, so she held up a needle for her attention. "Now Jeremias didn't know the real reason behind their rudeness, but in many places back then, them white folks changed cooks as often as they changed britches."
"Sometimes even more often," laughed Jeremias. "At first I tried to figure out what I had done wrong, like whether my eggs was somehow old or cracked and such. I feared folks would spread the word that I sold bad eggs and it weighed on me, it surely did."
"Ever time my husband lost a customer, he lost sleep over it. I know. He wadn't quite right 'til he found out the real reason why they was rude like that."
"After a while, of course, I took it in stride, even when a cook who knew me real good chased me away."
"Did you ever figure out why they were rude?"
"Well, Missy, I come to realized that them cooks were people just like you and me. Her boss might of snapped at her for somethin' or the other and she would snap at me. It's just human nature is what it is. So I didn't let it bother me after a while."
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