edom, and he had begun to feel that he should never again
find himself encompassed by the decorous system of a well-managed
household.

It was at this juncture that Uncle Matthew arrived and presented his
curious petition, which was that he should be accepted as general
servant, with wages or without them.

He had not belonged to Judge De Willoughby, but to a distant relative,
and, as he was an obstinate and conservative old person, he actually felt
that to be "a free nigger" was rather to drop in the social scale.

"Whar's a man stand, sah, if he ain't got no fambly?" he said to Rupert
when he came to offer his services to him. "He stan' nowhar, that's war
he stan'; I've got to own up to it, Marse Rupert, I'se a 'ristycrat bawn
an' bred, an' I 'low to stay one, long's my head's hot. Ef my old mars's
fambly hadn't er gone fo'th en' bin scattered to de fo' win's of de
university, I'd a helt on, but when de las' of 'um went to dat Europe,
dey couldn't 'ford to take me, an' I had ter stay. An' when I heerd as
all yo' kin was gone an' you was gwine to live erlone like dis yere, I
come to ax yer to take me to wait on yer--as a favier, Marse Rupert--as a
_favier_. 'Tain't pay I wants, sah; it's a fambly name an' a fambly
circle."

"It's not much of a circle, Uncle Matt," said Rupert, looking round at
the bareness of the big room he sat in.

"'Tain't much fer you, suh," answered Uncle Matthew, "but it's a pow'fle
deal fer me in dese yere days. Ef yer don't take me, fust thing I knows
I'll be drivin' or waitin' on some Mr. Nobody from New York or Boston,
an' seems like I shouldn't know how to stand it. 'Scuse me a-recommendin'
myself, sah--I _look_ ole, but I ain't as ole as I look; I'se l'arnt to
cook, sah, from three womens what I was married to, an' I knows my place
an' how to keep house like it orter be kep'. Will you try me a mont',
Marse De Willoughby--will you try me a week?"

Rupert tried him and never regretted the venture. In fact, Uncle Matt's
accomplishments were varied for practical reasons. He had been in his
time first house servant, then coachman; he had married at twenty a woman
of forty, who had been a sort of female mulatto Vatel. When she had died,
having overheated herself and caught cold on the occasion of a series of
great dinners given at a triumphant political crisis, he had taken for
his second wife the woman whose ambition it had been to rival her in her
culinary arts. His third marriage had bee