ish, altogether shrewd and competent
negress had not figured after some fashion or other: as foster parent,
as unofficial but none the less capable guardian, as confidante, as
overseer, as dictator, as tirewoman who never tired of well-doing, as
arbiter of big things and little--all these roles, and more, too, she
had played to them, not once, but a thousand times.

It was Aunt Sharley who had dressed them for their first real party--not
a play-party, as the saying went down our way, but a regular dancing
party, corresponding to a debut in some more ostentatious and less
favoured communities. It was Aunt Sharley who had skimped and scrimped
to make the available funds cover the necessary expenses of the little
household in those two or three lean years succeeding their mother's
death, when dubious investments, which afterward turned out to be good
ones, had chiseled a good half off their income from the estate. It was
Aunt Sharley who, when the question of going away to boarding school
rose, had joined by invitation in the conference on ways and means with
the girls' guardians, Judge Priest and Doctor Lake, and had cast her
vote and her voice in favour of the same old-fashioned seminary that
their mother in her girlhood had attended. The sisters themselves had
rather favoured an Eastern establishment as being more fashionable and
smarter, but the old woman stood fast in her advocacy of the other
school. What had been good enough for her beloved mistress was good
enough for her mistress' daughters, she insisted; and, anyhow, hadn't
the quality folks always gone there? Promptly Doctor Lake and Judge
Priest sided with her; and so she had her way about this important
matter, as she had it about pretty much everything else.

It was Aunt Sharley who had indignantly and jealously vetoed the
suggestion that a mulatto sewing woman, famed locally for her skill,
should be hired to assist in preparing the wardrobes that Emmy Lou and
Mildred must take with them. It was Aunt Sharley who, when her day's
duties were over, had sat up night after night until all hours,
straining her eyes as she plied needle and scissors, basting and hemming
until she herself was satisfied that her chillen's clothes would be as
ample and as ornate as the clothes which any two girls at the boarding
school possibly could be expected to have. It was Aunt Sharley who
packed their trunks for them, who kissed them good-by at the station,
all three of them bein