. I hear 'im say, 'I wouldn't 'a'
done it fer de worl', Conant--not fer de worl'.' Den de doctor, he
come up, an' Marse Tumlin, he pester de man twel he hear 'im say,
'Don't worry, Major; dis boy'll live ter be a older man dan you ever
will.' Den Marse Tumlin got his pistol an' hunt up an' down fer dat ar
Tom Ferryman, but he done gone. I seed 'im when he got on his hoss.

"I say to Marse Tumlin, 'Ain't you des ez well ter fetch Marse Paul
Conant home whar we all kin take keer uv 'im?' He low, 'Dat's a
_fack_. Go home an' tell yo' Miss Vallie fer ter have de big room
fixed up time we git dar wid 'im.' I say, 'Humph! I'll fix it myse'f;
I know'd I ain't gwine ter let Miss Vallie do it.'

"Well, suh, 'tain't no use fer ter tell yer de rest. Dar's dat ar baby
in dar, an' what mo' sign does you want ter show you dat it all turned
out des like one er dem ol'-time tales?"

A KENTUCKY CINDERELLA

By F. HOPKINSON SMITH

Copyright 1899 by F. Hopkinson Smith.

I was bending over my easel, hard at work upon a full-length portrait
of a young girl in a costume of fifty years ago, when the door of my
studio opened softly and Aunt Chloe came in.

"Good-mawnin', suh! I didn' think you'd come to-day, bein' a Sunday,"
she said, with a slight bend of her knees. "I'll jes' sweep up a lil
mite; doan' ye move, I won't 'sturb ye."

Aunt Chloe had first opened my door a year before with a note from
Marny, a brother brush, which began with "Here is an old Southern mammy
who has seen better days; paint her if you can," and ended with, "Any
way, give her a job."

The bearer of the note was indeed the ideal mammy, even to the bandanna
handkerchief bound about her head, and the capacious waist and ample
bosom--the lullaby resting-place for many a child, white and black. I
had never seen a real one in the flesh before. I had heard about them
in my earlier days. Daddy Billy, my father's body servant and my
father's slave, who lived to be ninety-four, had told me of his own
Aunt Mirey, who had died in the old days, but too far back for me to
remember. And I had listened, when a boy, to the traditions connected
with the plantations of my ancestors,--of the Keziahs and Mammy
Crouches and Mammy Janes,--but I had never looked into the eyes of one
of the old school until I saw Aunt Chloe, nor had I ever fully realized
how quaintly courteous and gentle one of them could be until, with an
old-time manner, born of a training