ut I had an inward assurance that to ask
leave would be not to go. I felt I must go. I ran back to the room
where my things lay, and in two minutes I was out of the house.

My first introduction to Magnolia! How well I remember every minute
and every foot of the way. It was delicious, the instant I stepped out
among the oaks and into the sunshine. Freedom was there, at all
events.

"Now, Daisy, we'll go to the stables," Preston said, "and see if there
is anything fit for you. I am afraid there isn't; though Edwards told
me he thought there was."

"Who is Edwards?" I asked, as we sped joyfully away through the oaks,
across shade and sunshine.

"Oh, he is the overseer."

"What is an overseer?"

"What is an overseer?--why, he is the man that looks after things."

"What things?" I asked.

"All the things--everything, Daisy; all the affairs of the plantation;
the rice fields and the cotton fields and the people, and everything."

"Where are the stables? and where are we going?"

"Here--just here--a little way off. They are just in a dell over
here--the other side of the house, where the quarters are."

"Quarters?" I repeated.

"Yes. Oh, you don't know anything down here, but you'll learn. The
stables and quarters are in this dell we are coming to; nicely out of
sight. Magnolia is one of the prettiest places on the river."

We had passed through the grove of oaks on the further side of the
house, and then found the beginning of a dell which, like the one by
which we had come up a few hours before, sloped gently down to the
river. In its course it widened out to a little low sheltered open
ground, where a number of buildings stood.

"So the house is between two dells," I said.

"Yes; and on that height up there, beyond the quarters, is the
cemetery; and from there you can see a great many fields and the
river, and have a beautiful view. And there are capital rides all
about the place, Daisy."

When we came to the stables, Preston sent a boy in search of "Darius."
Darius, he told me, was the coachman, and chief in charge of the
stable department. Darius came presently. He was a grey-headed,
fine-looking, most respectable black man. He had driven my mother and
my mother's mother; and being a trusted and important man on the
place, and for other reasons, he had a manner and bearing that were a
model of dignified propriety. Very grave "Uncle Darry" was; stately
and almost courtly in his respectful courtesy; bu