.
"Yas, my Miss Jinny, bress de Lawd. It's Basha." She turned to the girl.
"Dis yer chile ain't nebber my young Marse Pendleton's chile!"

But it was; and there was explanation and laughter and tears, too, but
tears of happiness. Then it was told how, after that crash of disaster
was over; the family had tried in vain to find Basha and Jeems; had
tried always. It was told how a great fortune had come to them in the
turn of a hand by the discovery of an unsuspected salt mine on the old
estate; how "young Marse Pendleton," a famous surgeon now, had by that
time made for himself a career and a home in this Northern state; how
his wife had died young, and his mother, "Miss Jinny," had come to live
with him and take care of his one child, the vision. And then the simple
annals of Aunt Basha and Uncle Jeems were also told, the long struggle
to keep respectable, only respectable; the years of toil and frugality
and saving--saving the two hundred dollars which she had offered this
morning as a "free gif" to her country. In these annals loomed large for
some time past the figure of a "young marse" who had been good to her
and helped her much and often in spite of his own "_res augusta
domi_,"--which was not Aunt Basha's expression. The story was
told of his oration in the little hall bedroom about Liberty
"whatjer-m'-call-'ems," and of how the boy had stirred the soul of the
old woman with his picture of the soldiers in the trenches.

"So it come to me, Miss Jinny, how ez me'n Jeems was thes two wuthless
ole niggers, an' hadn't fur to trabble on de road anyways, an' de Lawd
would pervide, an' ef He didn't we could scratch grabble some ways. An'
dat boy, dat young Marse David, he tole me everbody ought to gib dey
las' cent fo' Unc' Sam an' de sojers. So"--Aunt Basha's high,
inexpressibly sweet laughter of pure glee filled the room--"so I thes
up'n handed over my two hun'erd."

"It was the most beautiful and wonderful thing that's been done in all
wonderful America," pronounced Eleanor Cabell as one having authority.
She went on. "But that young man, your young Marse David, why doesn't he
fight if he's such a patriot?"

"Bress gracious, honey," Aunt Basha hurried to explain, "he's a-honin'
to fight. But he cayn't. He's lame. He goes a-limpin'. Dey won't took
him."

"Oh!" retracted Eleanor. Then: "What's his name? Maybe father could cure
him."

"He name Lance. Marse David Lance."

Why should Miss Jinny jump? "David Lance?