ll, seh, Mahstah Majah, of co'se, yo'-all tole me to fix it man own
way, an' Ah lay Ah'd do it raghtly--an' so Miss Cahline is ve'y busy
goin' th'oo th' rooms an' spressin' huhse'f how grand evehthing suttinly
do look an' so fothe an' so on, an' sh' ain't payin' much attention--Ah
reckon sh' ain't huhd raghtly--"

"Clem--the Bible says, 'How forceful are right words!'"

He stopped at my look, despaired, and became succinct.

"Well, seh, Ah jes' think Ah brek it to huh easy-lahk, by degrees, so Ah
sais yo' is a genaman of wahm South'n lahkings. Ah sais yo' been so hot
fo' th' South all th'oo that theh wah that evehbody yeh'bouts despised
an' reviled you. An' she sais why ain't yo' gone faght fo' th' South ef
yo'-all so hot about it, an' Ah sais yo' was eageh to go, but yo' been
in the timbeh business, an' one day yo' got rash about yo' saw-mill, an'
th' ole buzz-saw jes' natchelly tuk off yo' ahm, so's yo' couldn't go to
th' wah. Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah--Ah laid Ah'd brek it grajally--an' Ah
suttingly did have that lady a-thinkin' ve'y highly of yo' at th' time
of yo' entrance, seh,--yes, seh!"

CHAPTER XV

LITTLE ARCADY VIEWS A PARADE

And so began the time of Miss Caroline among us,--one effect the more of
Fate's mad trickery. It was my privilege to be more intimately aware of
her concerns than was the town at large. And even to me in those days she
carried off the difficulties of her lot with a manner so plausible that
it clenched my admiration if it did not win my belief. I knew that she
daily bore a burden of ruin and faced a future of perilous uncertainty.
I knew that she must have journeyed into our strange land with a real
terror, nerved to that course only by a resolve to be no longer a burden
upon her impoverished kinsman. Surely it had been like dying a death for
her to leave the land of her own people, devastated though it was and
vacant of those who had made the world easy for her.

And I was not a little puzzled by the tie that bound her to her one
remaining stay. Both she and Clem, I saw, considered her coming to him
to be a thing so natural that it should excite no wonder, a thing
familiar in the thought and as little to be puzzled about as their own
breathing. I saw that her perplexities lay not at all in this black
fellow's unthinking adherence to his life of service, but rather in the
circumstance of her spirit-grieving exile and in the necessary doubts of
her chattel's competence for