"My own grandmother had the second sight; and _I_ don't need
spectacles," said Alicia. "Sophy, that man has come into our lives
to stay. I feel it in my bones! It's not an unpleasant feeling," she
finished gracelessly.

When Unc' Adam presently put in his appearance, he was profoundly
impressed and respectful: we were brisk, unhaunted, and unafraid,
after a night in Hynds House! The three colored women who had come
with him, induced by cupidity and curiosity to enter ol' Mis'
Scarlett's ill-omened domain, at first hung back. They were plainly
prepared to bolt at the first unusual noise.

Of the three, one--by name Mary Magdalen--proved to be a
heaven-born, predestinated cook; and her we persuaded, by bribery,
cajolery, and subornation of scruples, to remain with us
permanently. Only, she flatly refused to stay on the place
overnight. Darkness shouldn't catch Mary Magdalen under the Scarlett
Witch's roof-tree.

There are certain gifted beings who possess the secret of bringing
order out of chaos; for them the total depravity of inanimate
objects has no terrors; inanimate objects become docile to their
will. Such a one was Mary Magdalen. In two days she had transformed
a sooty cavern into a clean and orderly kitchen. For she was a
singing and a scourful woman, and her Sign was the speretual and the
scrubbing-brush. It is true that she put a precious old Spode
tea-pot on the stove and boiled the tea in it; that she hung her wig
and the dish-towel on the same nail; and that she immediately asked
for a white stocking foot to use as a coffee-bag.

"But don't you-all go bust no new pai'h," she advised economically.
"Ah 'd rathah make mah coffee in a ol' white stockin' foot any day,
jes' so you ain't done wo' out de toes too much."

"Sophy," said the horror-struck Alicia, "that woman must be watched
until we can buy a percolater. Suppose she's got 'a ol' white
stockin' foot' of her own!"

Despite which there never was, never will be, such another cook as
Mary Magdalen. It is true she wasn't amenable to discipline, and
reason wasn't her guiding-lamp. And nothing--not bribes, threats,
entreaties, prayers, orders, commands, moral suasion--could break
her of doing just what she wanted to do just when and how she wanted
to do it. You'd be entertaining your dearest enemies, serene in the
consciousness that your house was a credit to your good management;
and behold, Mary Magdalen in the drawing-room door, with her wig
askew