ll laugh, and they said it
was a prime good hit.

CHAPTER XXVI

Well, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was
off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would
do for Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey,
which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her
sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a
pallet in it. The king said the cubby would do for his valley--meaning
me.

So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was
plain but nice. She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other
traps took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he
said they warn't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them
was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There
was an old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and
all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls
brisken up a room with. The king said it was all the more homely and
more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The
duke's room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my
cubby.

That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was
there, and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on
them, and the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the
head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the
biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough
the fried chickens was--and all that kind of rot, the way women always
do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything
was tiptop, and said so--said "How _do_ you get biscuits to brown so
nice?" and "Where, for the land's sake, _did_ you get these amaz'n
pickles?" and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people
always does at a supper, you know.

And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen
off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean
up the things. The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and
blest if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. She
says:

"Did you ever see the king?"

"Who? William Fourth? Well, I bet I have--he goes to our church." I
knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he
goes to our church, she says:

"What--regular?"

"Yes--regular. His pew's right over opposi