son, a tall, slender colored boy of
eighteen summers, whose spotless white linen jacket and intense gravity
of demeanor gained him the favor of even Celestine. "He has manners like
the Governor of Vermont and all his staff, I do declare!" was the secret
thought of this good woman. Telano, who had never seen a white servant
before, treated Celestine with profound respect; his inward belief was
that she was a witch, which would account for her inexplicable leanness,
and the conciseness of her remarks, the latter most singular of all to
Telano, who had the usual flowery fluency of his race. He carried a
Voudoo charm against her, and brandished it when she was not looking; in
addition, he often arranged, swiftly and furtively, in a corner of the
dining-room when he came to lay the cloth, a little pile of three minute
twigs crossed in a particular fashion, and sprinkled with unknown
substances which he also took from his pocket, the whole a protection
from her supposed incantations against him. Minerva meanwhile had no
suspicion of these pagan rites, she continued to be pleased with Telano,
and had a plan for teaching him to read. The boy sang with the charming
sweetness so common among the Africans, and once, after listening,
duster in hand, in spite of herself, for a quarter of an hour, as he
carolled over the dishes he was washing in his pantry, she went so far
as to appear at his pantry door to ask, briefly, if he knew a favorite
song of her youth, "The Draggle-tail Gypsies, Oh!" Telano did not know
it. And she said she would sing it to him some day. Whereupon Telano, as
soon as possible afterwards, took flight in his long white apron back to
the Seminole House for a fresh charm against her; he was convinced that
the singing of this strange bony woman would finish him, would be the
worst spell of all.

"That's a very good black boy we've got to wait at table and do the
chores," Celestine remarked approvingly to her mistress, as she brought
a shawl of different thickness, suitable to the dew in the air, to put
round her. "He's a deal sight more serious-minded than the
rantum-scootum boys one has to put up with in a wanderin' life like
this. He's spry, yet he's steady too; and he sings like a bobolink,
though his songs are most _dreadful_ as to words. There's one, 'O Lord,
these _bones_ of mine! O Lord, these BONES of mine! O Lord, these BONES
of mine!'"--Celestine sang this quotation in a high chanting voice, with
her eye