ef in her voice, "yo' came to
talk about the fahm?"

"Yes," said Courtland, rising, "but not to interrupt the work on it.
Will you let me help you nail up the laths on the wall? I have some
experience that way, and we can talk as we work. Do oblige me!"

The young girl looked at him brightly.

"Well, now, there's nothing mean about THAT. Yo' mean it for sure?"

"Perfectly. I shall feel so much less as if I was enjoying your company
under false pretenses."

"Yo' just wait here, then."

She jumped from the sofa, ran out of the room, and returned presently,
tying the string of a long striped cotton blouse--evidently an extra one
of Sophy's--behind her back as she returned. It was gathered under her
oval chin by a tape also tied behind her, while her fair hair was tucked
under the usual red bandana handkerchief of the negro housemaid. It is
scarcely necessary to add that the effect was bewitching.

"But," said Miss Sally, eying her guest's smartly fitting frock-coat,
"yo' 'll spoil yo'r pooty clothes, sure! Take off yo'r coat--don't mind
me--and work in yo'r shirtsleeves."

Courtland obediently flung aside his coat and followed his active
hostess through the French window to the platform outside. Above them a
wooden ledge or cornice, projecting several inches, ran the whole length
of the building. It was on this that Miss Sally had evidently found a
foothold while she was nailing up a trellis-work of laths between it and
the windows of the second floor. Courtland found the ladder, mounted
to the ledge, followed by the young girl, who smilingly waived his
proffered hand to help her up, and the two gravely set to work. But in
the intervals of hammering and tying up the vines Miss Sally's tongue
was not idle. Her talk was as fresh, as quaint, as original as herself,
and yet so practical and to the purpose of Courtland's visit as to
excuse his delight in it and her own fascinating propinquity. Whether
she stopped to take a nail from between her pretty lips when she spoke
to him, or whether holding on perilously with one hand to the trellis
while she gesticulated with the hammer, pointing out the divisions of
the plantation from her coign of vantage, he thought she was as clear
and convincing to his intellect as she was distracting to his senses.

She told him how the war had broken up their old home in Pineville,
sending her father to serve in the Confederate councils of Richmond,
and leaving her aunt and herself to m