seeing my eyes open
dropped her curtsey.

"Please, missis, may I be Miss Daisy's girl?"

"I will ask Aunt Gary," I answered, a good deal surprised.

"Miss Daisy is the mistress. We all belong to Miss Daisy. It will be
as she say."

I thought to myself that very little was going to be "as I said." I
got out of bed, feeling terribly slim-hearted, and stood in my
nightgown before the fire, trying to let the blaze warm me. Margaret
did her duties with a zeal of devotion that reminded me of my old
June.

"I will ask Aunt Gary," I said; "and I think she will let you build my
fire, Margaret."

"Thank'e, ma'am. First-rate fires. I'll make, Miss Daisy. We'se all so
glad Miss Daisy come to Magnoly."

Were they? I thought, and what did she mean by their all "belonging to
me?" I was not accustomed to quite so much deference. However, I
improved my opportunity by asking Margaret my question of the day
before about church. The girl half laughed.

"Ain't any church big enough to hold all de people," she said. "Guess
we coloured folks has to go widout."

"But where _is_ the church?" I said.

"Ain't none, Miss Daisy. People enough to make a church full all
himselves."

"And don't you want to go?"

"Reckon it's o' no consequence, missis. It's a right smart chance of a
way to Bo'mbroke, where de white folks' church is. Guess they don't
have none for poor folks nor niggers in dese parts."

"But Jesus died for poor people," I said, turning round upon my
attendant. She met me with a gaze I did not understand, and said
nothing. Margaret was not like my old June. She was a clear mulatto,
with a fresh colour and rather a handsome face; and her eyes, unlike
June's little anxious, restless, almond-shaped eyes, were liquid and
full. She went on carefully with the toilet duties which busied her;
and I was puzzled.

"Did you never hear of Jesus?" I said presently. "Don't you know that
He loves poor people?"

"Reckon He loves rich people de best, Miss Daisy," the girl said, in a
dry tone.

I faced about to deny this, and to explain how the Lord had a special
love and care for the poor. I saw that my hearer did not believe me.
"She had heerd so," she said.

The dressing-bell sounded long and loud, and I was obliged to let
Margaret go on with my dressing; but in the midst of my puzzled state
of mind, I felt childishly sure of the power of that truth, of the
Lord's love, to break down any hardness and overcome any coldness.
Yet