rming to me. The ground about the negro cottages was kept neat;
they were neatly built of stone and stood round the sides of a
quadrangle; while on each side and below the wooded slopes of ground
closed in the picture. Sunlight was streaming through and brightening
up the cottages, and resting on Uncle Darry's swart face. Down through
the sunlight I went to the cottages. The first door stood open, and I
looked in. At the next I was about to knock, but Preston pushed open
the door for me; and so he did for a third and a fourth. Nobody was in
them. I was a good deal disappointed. They were empty, bare, dirty,
and seemed to be very forlorn. What a set of people my mother's hands
must be, I thought. Presently I came upon a ring of girls, a little
larger than I was, huddled together behind one of the cottages. There
was no manners about them. They were giggling and grinning, hopping on
one foot, and going into other awkward antics; not the less that most
of them had their arms filled with little black babies. I had got
enough for that day, and turning about, left the dell with Preston.

At the head of the dell, Preston led off in a new direction, along a wide
avenue that ran through the woods. Perfectly level and smooth, with the
woods closing in on both sides and making long vistas through their boles
and under their boughs. By and by we took another path that led off from
this one, wide enough for two horses to go abreast. The pine trees were
sweet overhead and on each hand, making the light soft and the air
fragrant. Preston and I wandered on in delightful roaming; leaving the
house and all that it contained at an unremembered distance. Suddenly we
came out upon a cleared field. It was many acres large; in the distance a
number of people were at work. We turned back again.

"Preston," I said, after a silence of a few minutes,--"there seemed to
be no women in those cottages. I did not see any."

"I suppose not," said Preston; "because there were not any to see."

"But had all those little babies no mothers?"

"Yes, of course, Daisy; but they were in the field."

"The mothers of those little babies?"

"Yes. What about it? Look here--are you getting tired?"

I said no; and he put his arm round me fondly, so as to hold me up a
little; and we wandered gently on, back to the avenue, then down its
smooth course further yet from the house, then off by another wood
path through the pines on the other side. This was a narrow