three in the afternoon
`` A good boy , sir , but beginning to be contaminated . Brought him here from Nashville over ten years ago . Eight years ago they proved to him that he was no longer a slave , and made him d -- d unhappy until I promised him it should make no difference to him and he could stay . I had to send for his wife and child -- of course , a dead loss of eighteen hundred dollars when they set foot in the State -- but I 'm blanked if he is n't just as miserable with them here , for he has to take two hours in the morning and three in the afternoon every day to be with 'em . I tried to get him to take his family to the mines and make his fortune , like those fellows they call bankers and operators and stockbrokers nowadays ; or to go to Oregon where they 'll make him some kind of a mayor or sheriff -- but he wo n't . He collects my rents on some little property I have left , and pays my bills , sir , and , if this blank civilization would only leave him alone , he 'd be a good enough boy . '' Paul could n't help thinking that the rents George collected were somewhat inconsistent with those he was evidently mending when he arrived , but at that moment the jingle of glasses was heard in the sitting-room , and the old negro reappeared at the door .