light rivalry had always existed as
to the superiority of her own white children.

"'T is a pity Miss Calline's back's so round," said Polly one night as
the children were being undressed.

Now, if there was a feature in which Mammy took a pride, it was in the
straightness of the children's limbs and the flatness of their backs,
above all the limbs and backs in the other branches of the family;
so, firing up at once, she replied that she would like to see a
flatter back than "this here one," laying her hand upon Caroline's.

"Miss Emmaline's is a sight flatter," Polly stoutly maintained. "She's
got as pretty shape as ever I see,--all our people's got good shapes
from old Missis down. I reckon this chile's got her back from her pa's
fambly." When Polly said this, Mammy felt that the gauntlet had been
flung down, and, at once, with an eloquence all her own, so defended
the "shapes" of her "fambly" that Polly was fairly beaten in the war
of words, and was forced to admit, with many apologies, that Miss
Caroline's back was as flat as Miss Emmaline's.

Mammy accepted the apology with some hauteur, and it was several days
before entire cordiality was reestablished; in fact, in all her after
life, Mammy would, when in certain moods, hark back to "dat time when
dat long-mouthed Polly had de imperdence to say dat our folks' backs
weren't as straight as hern."

Full of peaceful content were the lives of both whites and blacks.
Merrily the Christmas went by, to be followed by others as merry, and
the winters and summers came and went, turning childhood into maturity
and maturity into old age. Mammy's glory reached its zenith when, at
"Miss Calline's" grand wedding, she herself rustled about in all the
grandeur of a new black silk and Polly was forever squelched. The
whole world seemed full of prosperity, abundance, and careless
happiness, when suddenly, like a thunderbolt, the war came.

The plantation home was abandoned very carelessly, and with light
hearts the family drove away, expecting nothing but to return with the
frosts of winter. They refugeed to a farmhouse upon the outskirts of a
little up-country village.

Sedley, though still a beardless youth, shouldered his musket, and
took his place in the ranks. Sibyl and her mother, in the little rude
farmhouse, thought not of their lost splendor, but cheerfully looked
for the good days sure to come when, the war over, the dear ones would
come back, and the old times. Ev