ey
petted and quarreled with them; they expected all kinds of service from
them; and they were on their part, constantly doing things for the
children of "the quarters" and giving them presents. Wherever the white
children went about the plantation there was sure to be a crowd of
colored boys and girls tagging them.

After the first day Mother Bunker was reassured that nothing could
happen to her brood, because there were so many of the colored men about
the grounds to look after them. As in the house, a black or brown face,
broadly a-smile, was likely to appear almost anywhere.

The quarters, as the cabins occupied by the colored people were called,
were not far from the house, but not in sight of it. Even the kitchen
was in a separate house, back of the big house. After bedtime there was
not a servant left in the big house unless somebody was sick.

"Mammy used to live here," Mrs. Armatage explained, in her languid
voice, "while the children were small. I couldn't have got along without
mammy. She was my mammy too. But she's too old to be of much use now,
and Frane has pensioned her. She has her own little house and plot of
ground and if her boy--her youngest boy--had stayed with her, mammy
would get along all right. She worries about that boy."

The Bunker children did not understand much about this until, on the
second day after their arrival, Phillis said:

"I'm going down to see mammy. Want to come?"

"Is--isn't your mammy here at home?" asked Vi. "Dora Blunt calls her
mother 'mammy'; but we don't."

"I've got a mother and a mammy too," explained the oldest Armatage girl.
"You-all come on and see her. She'll be glad to see you folks from the
North. She will ask you if you've seen her Ebenezer, for he went up
North. We used to all call him 'Sneezer,' and it made him awfully mad."

"Didn't he have any better name?" asked Russ.

"His full name is Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs. Of course, their
name isn't really Meiggs, like the plantation; but the darkies often
take the names of the places where they were born. Sneezer was a real
nice boy."

"He isn't dead, is he?" asked Russ.

"Reckon not," said Phillis. "But Mammy June is awful' worried about him.
She hasn't heard from him now for more than a year. So she doesn't know
what to think."

"But she has got other folks, hasn't she?" Rose asked.

"You'd think so! Grandchildren by the score," replied the older
Armatage girl, laughing. "Sneezer had lots