l put them in the boxes haphazard," she said, "and the
uncertainty of getting one will make it more exciting than if there were
one for every box."

The path back to the house led past the kitchen, where several colored
women were helping Aunt Cindy. Just as they passed, one of them put her
head out of the door to call to a group of children crowded around one
of the windows of the great house. They were watching the decorators at
work inside the drawing-room, hanging the gate of roses in the arch. The
youngest one was perched on a barrel that had been dragged up for that
purpose, so that his older brothers and sisters might be spared the
weariness of holding him up to see. A narrow board laid across the top
made an uneasy and precarious perch for him. He was seated astride, with
his bare black legs dangling down inside the barrel.

"You M'haley Gibbs," called the woman, "don't you let Ca'line Allison
lean agin that bo'd. It'll upset Sweety into the bar'l."

Her warning came too late, for even as she called the slight board was
pushed off its foundations by the weight of the roly-poly Ca'line
Allison, and the pickaninny went down into the barrel as suddenly as a
candle is snuffed out by the wind.

"You M'haley, I'll natcherly lay you out," shrieked the woman, hurrying
up the path to the rescue. But M'haley, made agile by fifteen years of
constant practice, dodged the cuffing as it was about to descend, and
scuttled around the house to wait till Sweety stopped howling.

"They are Sylvia Gibbs's children," said Lloyd, in answer to Doctor
Bradford's astonished comment at seeing so many little negroes in a row.
"They can scent a pahty five miles away, and they hang around like
little black buzzahds waiting for scraps of the feast. I suppose they
feel they have a right to be heah to-day, as Sylvia is helping in the
kitchen. They're the same children, Eugenia," she added, "who were heah
so much when I had my first house-pahty. M'haley is the one who brought
you that awful, skinny, mottled chicken in a bandbox for you to 'take
home on the kyers fo' a pet,' she said."

"So she is!" exclaimed Eugenia, as they passed around the corner of the
house and caught sight of M'haley, who was peeping out to see if the
storm was over, and if it would be safe to return to the sightseeing at
the window. Her teeth and eyeballs were a-shine with pleasure when
Eugenia passed on, after a pleasant greeting and some reference to the
chicken.