ndy Ann was too busy blacking a pair of boots to go at once, as
she had her hands to wash, and yet, although it seemed to him an age, it
was scarcely two minutes before she came down the stairs, nimble as a
cat, and bobbed before him with a courtesy nearly to the floor. Her
mistress had said to her. "Mind your manners. You say you have learned a
heap in Jacksonville."

"To be shoo'. I've seen de quality thar in Miss Perkins's house," Mandy
Ann replied, and hence the courtesy she thought rather fetching,
although she shook a little as she confronted the stranger, whose
features never relaxed in the least, and who did not answer her. "How
d'ye, Mas'r," which she felt it incumbent to say, as there was no one
else to receive him.

Mandy Ann was very bright, and as she knew no restraint in her Florida
home, when alone with her old Miss and young Miss, she was apt to be
rather familiar for a negro slave, and a little inclined to humor. She
knew whom the gentleman had come to see, but when he said. "Is your
mistress at home?" she turned at once to the piece of parchment in the
rocking-chair and replied. "To be shoo. Dar she is in de char over dar.
Dat's ole Miss Lucy."

Going up to the chair, she screamed in the woman's ear, "Wake up, Miss
Lucy. I'se done comed home an' thar's a gemman to see you? Wake up!"

She shook the bundle of shawls vigorously, until the old lady was
thoroughly roused and glared at her with her dark, beady eyes, while she
mumbled, "You hyar, shakin' me so, you limb. You, Mandy Ann! Whar did
you come from?"

"Jacksonville, in course. Whar'd you think? An' hyar's a gemman come to
see you, I tell you. Wake up an' say how d'ye."

"Whar is he?" the old woman asked, beginning to show some interest,
while the stranger arose and coming forward said, "Excuse me, madam. It
is the young lady I wish to see--your daughter."

"She hain't her mother. She's her granny," Mandy Ann chimed in with a
good deal of contempt in her voice, as she nodded to the figure in the
chair, who, with some semblance of what she once was, put out a skinny
hand and said, "I'm very pleased to see you. Call Dory. She'll know what
to do."

This last to Mandy Ann, who flirted away from her and said to the
stranger, "She hain't no sense mostly--some days more, some days
littler, an' to-day she's littler. You wants to see Miss Dory? She's
upstars changin' her gown, 'case she knows you're hyar. I done tole her,
an' her face lit right up