ging picture for a housekeeper: there was a bright fire, and a
tidy room, with a nice-looking colored girl who wore a headkerchief and
a check apron over her chintz gown. She rose up from her seat, and gave
me a slight curtsy, which civility I acknowledged half shyly, half
coldly.

"This is Lucy," said Ernestina, "the new maid I have engaged for you,
Ma'am." Then, addressing the girl, she added,--"Lucy, you may dish up
supper now."

"I wonder how I shall like her," was my remark to Ernestina, as we went
into the library. "Do you think she will bully me much?"

Ernestina laughed.

"No, indeed, Ma'am! She is gentle and civil. I think she will suit you.
I have found her both capable and agreeable while we have been putting
the house in order."

"Oh I can dispense with capability,--a little of it, at least,--if she
will only not frighten me out of my wits with a vixen temper!"

"No fear of that, I assure you," said Ernestina, encouragingly.

Nor was there any cause for fear. During the five months the girl lived
with me, I found her uniformly civil and amiable. I do not intend
inflicting on my readers any more of my personal experience with Lucy;
it is her own little history I wish to relate.

A few days after my return home, I noticed, that, when Lucy was left to
herself, she seemed sad. I often observed her suppressing tears; and
every little while she gave a heavy, long sigh, as if apprehensive of
some trouble.

I am as unwilling to meddle with the affairs of inferiors as with those
of equals; so I contented myself with speaking very gently, granting
little unexpected indulgences, and smiling cheerfully at her. I knew she
was married to a man who was many years her senior, and it was said they
were much attached to each other. This husband had gone into the army,
and Ernestina told me that Lucy and he were looking anxiously forward to
the period of his return,--more than two years off,--when they hoped to
take his bounty-money and savings, and buy therewith a little house and
small "garden-patch" for a settled home.

One day I asked her if she could read or write.

"Neither," was the reply.

"How then, do you write to your husband?"

This question brought out the whole story of her anxiety. Hitherto her
friends had written in her name, but her husband had received only three
of the many letters she had sent him during the six months he had been
gone. In his last letter he had complained bitterly of her si