will look better
than that shrivelled old porter creature!" cries my lady.

"No livery is so becoming as old age, madam, and no lace as handsome
as silver hairs," says Mr. Warrington. "What will the county say if you
banish old Lockwood?"

"Oh! if you plead for him, sir, I suppose he must stay. Hadn't I better
order a couch for him out of my drawing-room, and send him some of the
best wine from the cellar?"

"Indeed your ladyship couldn't do better," Mr. Warrington remarked, very
gravely.

And my lord said, yawning, "Cousin George is perfectly right, my dear.
To turn away such an old servant as Lockwood would have an ill look."

"You see those mouldy old carps are, after all, a curiosity, and attract
visitors," continues Mr. Warrington, gravely. "Your ladyship must allow
this old wretch to remain. It won't be for long. And you may then engage
the tall porter. It is very hard on us, Mr. Van den Bosch, that we are
obliged to keep our old negroes when they are past work. I shall sell
that rascal Gumbo in eight or ten years."

"Don't tink you will, master!" says Gumbo, grinning.

"Hold your tongue, sir! He doesn't know English ways, you see, and
perhaps thinks an old servant has a claim on his master's kindness,"
says Mr. Warrington.

The next day, to Warrington's surprise, my lady absolutely did send a
basket of good wine to Lockwood, and a cushion for his armchair.

"I thought of what you said, yesterday, at night when I went to bed; and
guess you know the world better than I do, cousin; and that it's best to
keep the old man, as you say."

And so this affair of the porter's lodge ended, Mr. Warrington wondering
within himself at this strange little character out of the West, with
her naivete and simplicities, and a heartlessness would have done credit
to the most battered old dowager who ever turned trumps in St. James's.

"You tell me to respect old people. Why? I don't see nothin' to respect
in the old people, I know," she said to Warrington. "They ain't so
funny, and I'm sure they ain't so handsome. Look at grandfather; look
at Aunt Bernstein. They say she was a beauty once! That picture painted
from her! I don't believe it, nohow. No one shall tell me that I shall
ever be as bad as that! When they come to that, people oughtn't to live.
No, that they oughtn't."

Now, at Christmas, Aunt Bernstein came to pay her nephew and niece a
visit, in company with Mr. Warrington. They travelled at their leisure
in