e Chair
over the mantelpiece and the two china shepherdesses under her?"

"Then you shall see the new baby in the bigger Guest Room, and the
crippled Polish child in the small one," said my mother. "The baby's
name is Smelka Zurawawski, but she's all the better for it--I never
saw a nicer baby. And the little boy is so patient and so intelligent,
and so pretty! Dr. Westmoreland thinks he can be cured, and we hope to
be able to send him on to Johns Hopkins, after we've got him in good
shape. Where is your luggage? How long may we keep you? But first of
all you shall have tea and some of Clelie's cakes. Clelie has grown
horribly vain of her cakes. She expects to make them in heaven some of
these days, for the most exclusive of the cherubim and seraphim, and
the lordliest of the principalities and powers."

Mary Virginia smiled at the pleased old servant. "I've half a dozen
gorgeous Madras head-handkerchiefs for you, Clelie, and a perfect duck
of a black frock which you are positively to make up and wear now--you
are _not_ to save it up to be buried in!"

"No'm, Miss Mary Virginia. I won't get buried in it. I'll maybe get
married in it," said Clelie calmly.

"Married! Clelie!" said my mother, in consternation. "Do you mean to
tell me you're planning to leave me, at this time of our lives?"

Clelie was indignant. "You think I have no mo'sense than to leave you
and M'sieu Armand, for some strange nigger? Not me!"

"Who are you going to marry, Clelie?" Mary Virginia was delighted.
"And hadn't you better let me give you another frock? Black is hardly
appropriate for a bride."

"I'm not exactly set in my mind who he's going to be yet, Miss Mary
Virginia, but he's got to be somebody or other. There's been lots
after me, since it got out I'm such a grand cook and save my wages.
But I've got a sort of taste for Daddy January. He's old, but he's
lively. He's a real ambitious old man like that. Besides, I'm sure of
his family,--I always did like Judge Mayne and Mister Laurence, and I
do like 'ristocratic connections, Miss Mary Virginia. That big nigger
that drives one of the mill trucks had the impudence to tell me he'd
give me a church wedding and pay for it himself, but I told him I was
raised a Catholic; and what you think he said? He said, 'Oh, well,
you've been christened in the face already. We can dip the rest of you
easy enough, and then you'll be a real Christian, like me!' I'd just
scalded my chickens and was picki