's gone:
'When the master's dead, the house is shook,' they say where I was
raised. Oh, Miss Hetty! it's lonesome's death in the kitchen."

Hetty threw open the door into the sitting-room. "Put on a stick of
wood, Nan, and make the fire blaze up," she said.

While Nan was doing this, Hetty lighted the lamps, drew down the
curtains, and gave the room its ordinary evening look. Then she said,--

"Now, Nan, sit down: I want to talk with you," and Hetty herself sat
down in her father's chair on the right hand of the fireplace.

"Oh, Miss Hetty!" cried Nan, "don't you go set in that chair: you'll die
before the year 's out if you do. Oh please, Miss Hetty! get right up;"
and the poor old woman took forcible hold of her young mistress's arms,
and tried to lift her from the chair.

"To please you, I will sit in another chair now, Nan, because I want
you to be quiet and listen to me. But that will be my chair to sit in
always, just as it used to be my father's; and I shall not die before
the year 's out, Nan, nor I hope for a great many years to come yet,"
said Hetty.

"Oh, no! please the Lord, Miss Hetty," sobbed Nan: "who'd take care of
Caesar an' me ef you was to die."

"But I expect you and Caesar to take care of me, Nan," replied Hetty,
smiling, "and I want to have a good talk with you now, and make you
understand about our life here. You want to please me, don't you, Nan?"

"Oh, yes! Miss Hetty. You knows I do, and so does Caesar. We wouldn't
have no other missus, not in all these Norf States: we'd sooner go back
down where we was raised." Hetty smiled involuntarily at this violent
comparison, knowing well that both Caesar and Nan would have died sooner
than go back to the land where they were "raised." But she went on,--

"Very well. You never need have any other mistress as long as I
live: and when I die you and Caesar will have money enough to make you
comfortable, and a nice little house. Now the first thing I want you to
understand is that we are going to live on here in this house, exactly
as we did when my father was here. I shall carry on the farm exactly
as he would if he were alive; that is, as nearly as I can. Now you will
make it very hard for me, if you cry and are lonesome, and say such
things as you said to-night. If you want to please me, you will go right
on with your work cheerfully, and behave just as if your master were
sitting there in his chair all the time. That is what will please him
bes