to come to Oak Knowe to fetch you
home. Of course, you could come alone, as you went, but I'm
at leisure now, and have laid aside enough from my year's
earnings to pay the expenses of us all; and Ephraim wants to
go for you. He says 'it ain' fitten fo' no young lady lak my
li'l Miss to go trabbelin' erbout de country widout her own
serbant-boy to take care ob her. Mah Miss Betty was clean
bewitchted, erlowin' hit in de fust place, but she's laid up
an' ole Eph, he ain' gwine hab no mo' such foolishness.'

"Those are his own words and lately--Well, I don't like to
go against that old man's wishes. So he and I will be on
hand by the twenty-first of June and I expect can get put
up somewhere, though I'm ignorant as to what they do with
negroes in Canada.

"Faithfully,
"JIM."

"Negroes! Negroes? Why, is that Ephraim a negro?"

"Yes, indeed. As black as ink, almost, with the finest white head--of
wool! Not quite so thick and curly as your 'barristers' wear, but
handsome, I think. It represents so many, many years of faithful
service. That dear old man has taken care of Aunt Betty ever since she
was a child, and does so still. Nobody knows his real age, but it's
one proof of his devotion to her that he'll take this long journey
just because he remembers what's 'fitten,' even if she has grown
careless about it. You see, it's Uncle Seth's death that must have
changed her so," said Dorothy, musingly, with her eyes on the floor.

The other two exchanged pitying glances, and it rose to Winifred's
lips to say:

"But she let you come alone in the fall and he wasn't dead then;" but
she refrained. She knew, for Dolly had told her, that all that winter
Dorothy's home letters had not seemed quite the same as they had used,
during other separations from her aunt; and that many of them had
been written for Mrs. Calvert by various friends of the old lady's,
"just to oblige." Never before had the sprightly Mrs. Betty shrunk
from writing her own letters; and, indeed, had done so often enough
during the early winter to prevent Dorothy's suspicion of anything
amiss.

"Auntie dear, is so old, you know girls, that of course she does need
me. Besides she's been all over the world and seen everything, so
there's really 'nothing new under the sun' for her. That's why this
junketing around we'd planned so finely, doesn't