equired more than usual care or expedition, she was the one to be
called upon to do it. It was no easy task to please a person so fretful
and impatient in spirit as Mrs. Lee, yet Tidy, by her promptness and
docility, succeeded admirably. Still, with all her well-doing she was
not able entirely to avoid her harshness and cruelty.

One day, when she had been several months in Mrs. Lee's family, she was
set to find a ball of yarn which had become detached from her mistress's
knitting-work. Diligently she hunted for it every-where,--in Mammy
Grace's cabin, on the veranda, in the drawing-room, dining-room, and
kitchen, up-stairs, down-stairs, and in the lady's chamber, but no ball
was to be found. The mistress grew impatient, and the child searched
again. The mistress became unreasonable and threatened, and the child
really began to tremble for fear of undeserved chastisement. What could
she do?

What do you think she did? I will tell you?

Ever since that first night with Mammy Grace, when Tidy had asked her
what it was to pray, and had been told, "When we wants any ting we can't
git oursefs, nohow, we asks de Lord to gib it to us," these words
had been treasured in her memory; but as yet she had never had an
opportunity to put them to a practical use; for up to this time she
had not really wanted any thing. Her necessities were all supplied even
better than she had reason to expect; for in addition to the plain but
sufficient fare that was allowed her in the cabin, she was never a day
without luxuries from the table of the family. Fruits, tarts, and many
a choice bit of cake, found their way through the children's hands to
their little favorite, so that she had nothing to wish for in the eating
line. Her services with the children were so much in accordance with her
taste as to be almost pastime, and the old nurse was as kind and good as
a mother could be. Never until this day had she been brought into a
real strait; and it was in this emergency that she thought to put Mammy
Grace's suggestion to the test. She had attended the weekly prayer or
"praisin'-meetin's" as they were called, and observed that when the
men and women prayed, they seemed to talk in a familiar way with this
invisible Lord; and she determined to do the same. As she went out for
the third time from the presence of her mistress, downcast and unhappy,
she thought that if she only had such eyes as the Lord had, which Mammy
Grace repeatedly told her were