Come home; a romance of the Louisiana rice-lands

Contents

CHAPTER pAGH

I. The Girl Who Could Not Feel . . i

II. Camille Berenicia Comes Home . . . 16

Chapter I

A S the slow train, going into the Acadian parishes, southwestward from New Or¬ leans, stopped at the junction—the sixth stop in that last half-hour—Daniel thumped his knee irritably.

He could not bear the slowness, the frequent stoppings, the whole blamed pokiness of this road, of this place.

Intolerable! The doctor was dead wrong, to send a man in his condition down here to this dull¬ ness.

He was going to be bored; what was worse, he was sure to bore his grandfather, too.

They had no imagination, or they’d never have sent a sick man to disappoint the good old chap, who had probably been wanting a scion he could show off to his neighbors.

Daniel had imagination himself; it was not mak¬ ing things easier for him now.

The thing he dreaded most was that famous

Louisiana hospitality. Old neighbors who could remember his childhood among them, remember it more clearly than he did, and would want to remind him of its pleasant inanities, and perhaps hold cele¬ brations about him; when all he wanted was to be let alone, to “play dead” until—if so be—he could come alive again!

He had been glad to get away from all the kind¬ ness tendered him in New Orleans. Down here, in “the parishes,” it would be worse; here, where everybody had known his family since the days of 'Evangeline. Evangeline? Since d’Iberville! It was going to be—Lord!

Of course, the doctor had expressed theories and had to live up to them,—all that hokum about the restorative qualities of a childhood environment; what good could the fact that he’d lived here as a cub do now?—but how on earth had they ever got his mother’s consent, her cooperation? Poor little girl! How they must have scared her!

Daniel smiled with tender amusement as he thought of his mother.

Oh! Louisiana did have a certain call to him; normally he’d have liked visiting the family seat. He’d have liked to find out how much of this place he did remember.

That sugar-house awhile back,—wasn’t that where he and Camille La Grande had been punished for eating cuite syrup, against adult orders, when they’d been taken there to see the grinding? That funny little kid! She went and confessed before anybody made inquiries about it; Daniel recalled the shock of that. Nervy, though. There was some¬ thing sporting about that little gipsy. Was she here now? Married, probably.

For the love of Pete, what was that train waiting for now?

“Hold up! Steady there, boy!’’ He checked himself, brought his nervousness up short with a laugh, set his teeth upon it. “What’s your hurry, son? We’re not going anywhere.”

A breath of honeysuckle floated in the window. The world on that side of the train was a tangle of honeysuckle; fences, old trees,—the fragrant ground-vines reaching up ambitious for the gray moss that hung above their heads,—fallen logs, negro cabins, the very fields a carpet of white and green and yellow.

Through the opposite window he saw reedy marshes, punctuated by light jade trees and divided by lagoons and winding waters. Islands of waterhyacinths, not yet in bloom but vividly green, floated upon them. On the marge, giant irises,— purple, lilac, tawny,—were coming into flower.

The sky was plumbago blue; the reflections in the waters perfect.

A mocking-bird sang.

“Oh! it’s pretty enough,” Dan said grudgingly, as if resisting an inner voice. “But what on—oh, well! It’s orders.”

He stared moodily at the floating islands of hyacinth; likened himself to them. They looked like real earth-islands; he looked like a strong man. If you stepped on them you went through to the muddy water. As for him, no resistance either. Fake. Hollow. Floating.

Fie had expected too much of the War; life had given him something worth while to do at last and he had believed that he had found himself in it, never again to relax into the vapidities that tangled his personality and clung to him, like the gray moss that fellow out there was trying to unwind from the wheels of his buggy.

Even when they gave him the War Cross, his thought had been, “God! Let this last! Keep me in earnest!”

He had been deceived. He came back used up. Couldn’t even play any more. A beastly pain in his side, a weariness that was too restless to rest, a sense of futility as if it had all been just a grand gesture; a Cross of War and a double cross of peace,—that was what he had given himself. Why, he was worse than before he had enlisted! Then, green wood that wouldn’t burn. Now, embers.

Once more he pulled himself together.

“At it again! I must let go. ... I beg your pardon, Madam!”

The train had come to life with a jerk, and a large black-silked lady who had just walked down the isle was precipitated into Daniel’s lap.

He helped her to her feet.

She smelled of vetivert sachet and he liked the scent.

He liked the general effect of the stout lady, her lack of embarrassment, the pure amusement in her laugh, the tinkling jet beadwork on her chest and back, even the long earrings, green jade on black onyx, that dangled to her shoulders.

Her eyes were like black onyx, too; and her hair, in old-fashioned water-waves on her broad white forehead, was nearly as shiny as the jet-trimmed bonnet above it. There were deep dimples in her soft white cheeks; they were both showing now, as she smiled. Little pits of rice powder, they seemed, but nevertheless altogether friendly and agreeable. Her hands were dimpled, too; she steadied her¬ self with them as she took the seat next the window that Dan relinquished in her favor.

“Thank you!—I beg your pardon of you, sir!—* But, after all, it is the train should apologize: is it no? This train, he is so slow; and now to jomp, so of a sudden! I think some one must have frighten’ him; hein?” She chuckled at her own conceit. “Ah! Now we start. We pass more quickly now. I very near miss’ the train, me. You see me run? You didn’t see me run? Oh!’’—

regretfully—“you didn’t see me run! My chauffeur he was late and so I was also late; and he help’ me run for the train. I regret you didn’t see us run. We were fonny. My chauffeur has a wooden leg, votes savez? And me, I am not con¬ struct’ for to run; eh?”

She laughed a soft alto, to an accompaniment of tinkling beads.

Daniel enjoyed her. Without realizing it, the sick boy had been needing something, some one, warm and folksy. They soon accompanied each other, like old acquaintances.

In part, he explained himself to her. He was from New York. Rather knocked out. The doc¬ tor had prescribed Louisiana.

“Tss! Tss! C*est la guerre! I know. That war! Well, you will like here. Good food, good people, good beauty to see, ride, hunt, fish,—plenty. Much better than New York, I thank God.”

“You know New York?”

“My sister, she live’ there. In a barracks. Apartment house, they call it. Me, a barracks . On Park Avenue and Forty-Seven’ Street. ’Orrible!”

“You find it horrible,—Park Avenue and Forty- Seventh?” Dan asked, smiling.

“For me, yes. In New York they have no po’ches.”

He did not understand.

“Po’ches, verandas, galleries,—you know, po’¬ ches !”

‘‘Certainly; porches are scarce there.”

“So! No po’ches. No rocking chairs. No gardens. And me,—oh-ee !—I think: no po’ches, no hospitality. No rocking chairs, no comfort. No gardens, no homes. Not so? You think?”

Dan smiled, shrugged. “I’m used to it, you see.”

His animation had waned; he could not keep interested in anything for long.

He looked out of the window, taking no pleasure in the dark mystery of the lush woods going by.

His fellow-traveller understood, sighed, wrapped the young man in a motherly silence.

Helas! The invisible scars of war! In that country they knew them of old and still remem¬ bered, the women. It was all she could do not to pat the brown head drooping beside her.

A voice roused, lifted, rejuvenated it.

“Good morning, Mme. Boutin,” was all it said, as the girl passed by and sat down a little ahead of them, across the aisle.

“Good morning, Berne,” Mme. Boutin replied.

There was something so young, so strong, so steady, so singing in the girl's voice that Dan had risen to it as to the call of a bugle.

The girl was of fair height, slender but not frail ,—fausse maigre ,—very straight yet not un¬ graceful; there was a lone cypress on the skyline that stood and moved as she did.

Her face and throat were too thin for beauty;

the cheek-bones and the little bones of the shoulders showed like the soft padded ribs of a colt. She held her eyes well open, large, steady, observant. They were clear, dark, ruddy-golden brown like old amber, and heavily fringed with red-brown lashes dipped into black at the edges. Her eyebrows were silky and sweeping off to points, like the out¬ stretched wings of a bird.

Indeed, her whole expression was at once alert and soaring.

Her skin was very white and, like many red-haired women, she had a cluster of freckles across the bridge of her small, straight nose. Its nostrils and her eyelids were delicately finished, sculpturesmooth.

Her mouth, though tenderly turned, had a certain rigidity and so had her rounded chin. Once, a stranger had said that Berne’s mouth looked as if her lower lip were pressed to keep from trembling; but a neighbor had laughed in contradiction.

“You imagine, my friend! No, cher, no! She is not emotional, that girl!”

She wore her burnished hair, a streaked amalgam of gold and copper, drawn back too severely for her slender face; its mass at the nape of her neck seemed to pull it away from her forehead. But that fore¬ head was, after all, her chief beauty; not too high, broad, smooth and white, her only classic feature. The hair waved a very little, in long waves; a tendril had fallen to her cheek.

She held her head as a boy holds his, half timid, half defiant.

Berne wore a gray linen skirt and a gray blouse made like a Boy Scout’s. The jacket of her suit hung over her arm. A wide white sailor hat was in her hand.

“An interesting girl,” said Daniel. Though he did not dare, his manner asked, “Who is she?”

Mme. Boutin puckered her brow, raised her plump hand in apology, answered his implied ques¬ tion.

“You will forgive. But we,—it is an oldfashion’ custom,—cannot give our young ladies’ names to the strangers. To even such very nice strangers like you.”

“Of course, you can’t. And I didn’t ask you to, either; did I?” he laughed.

He sat back and regarded the girl. Her profile, white and fine against the brilliant blue of the sky, looked like a della Robbia relief.

Mme. Boutin would have been astonished to learn that his interest had begun before this encounter.

Dan had noticed that girl at the theater in New Orleans, first because of her hair; then he had been amused because she had not smiled throughout the acceptable comedy; he could see her well from his box.

He had commented upon her immobility and Raoul Cantrelle, his host, had shrugged and said, “She is cold, that child. And, perhaps, stupid.”

After that, Cantrelle could not give her name, of course, and Dan had not cared about it anyway. Not then.

But that girl, seen at closer range, did not look stupid. She had personality. He found that he wanted to know who she was.

It was a good sign in him, to have a real interest in anything. In his morbidly introspective state, he recognized that. He would indulge the impulse, rouse himself, take a little effort.

“Perhaps I may not be a stranger here, after all, dear Madam. Maybe you have mistaken a native for a stranger,” he said.

“Comment?”

“I haven’t been here since I was a boy. But, you know a family hereabout,—all over the landscape, I believe,—named Barde?”

“Barde But, yes! Who does not? I am married very close to tham.”

“Odillon Barde is my grandfather.”

“Dieu de dieu!” She clasped her hands, much excited. “You are the son of Olivier Barde! You are small Daniel Barde!”

“Yes, Madam. Most people, North, called us Barde, though, and my father dropped the accent after—”

“After he and your grandpere quarreled. I know! But do not you do so, here, my young friend. It is not my business but nevertheless my counsel. Keep that ancien accent. Best remain

Daniel Barde in your own country, my son. Oo- -ee ! Gai-Da ,—that is what we called you, be¬ cause you were so gay, so laughing always. You don’t remember? Yes! You remember!—I have hold you on my lap, cher, many times.”

She stopped, remembering how she had held him on her lap the day his mother deserted him.

He did not know about that, it was evident.

“Too bad I’ve forgotten that distinction,” he was saying with a smile. “But doubtless my mother will—”

“Without doubt,” she inserted drily. And Maude Barde would doubtless remember, too, she thought, how she had scolded her,—the frivolous little new-rich from Chicago,—for not being content with Olivier and the baby and the rice-plantation, for exposing to gossip an unblemished name. Poor little fool! Tiens! Maybe not such a fool after all. For had they not followed her, done as she wished, Olivier and the child? Had not Olivier hurt his good father to the heart for her? Oo-ee! They get their way in the world, these selfish women; they are the ones who get all. Ts! Ts! This boy probably adored his mother as that poor Olivier had adored his wife.

“And now may I know who the young lady is ?”

She laughed. “She interest’ you,?”

He told her about the theater; how the girl had not smiled at the play; how her aloofness had amused him.

“Hm. It is in character. To be sure, she has not much emotion, that child. She is austere, that girl. Like a statue. A very fine girl,—oh, yes 1 But she is not young and impulsive,—like me, who talk to strange young men on the trains.” The beads jingled.

“Who is she?” he begged. He was actually im¬ patient.

God! It was good to care! He really wanted to know. It mattered to him, something mattered at last; not very much, indeed,—but a break had come into his apathy, a rift in the cloud that op¬ pressed him.

Perhaps this wise woman sensed that. At any rate, she provoked his interest, introduced suspense.

“Some call her Berne of the Birds. Some call her Berne of the Byah.”

“Berne of Bayou or Birds,—very pretty. But what’s her name? Look here, madame f are you teasing me ?”

“Who knows? I have hold you on my knee, my friend. Not so? Oh, well! You shall be re¬ lieve’. This is Miss Camille Berenicia Marie La Grande.”

“Camille— what? Camille La Grande,—Fiammetta La Grande,— Flame! Little Flame grown up! That baby!”

“You remember, eh? Her, you remember; not me, eh? Me, on whose lap you two slap each other and cry!—But, see here, honey, mon fils! Do not call her Flame, Fiammetta, to-day. She don’t like those names any more. Berenicia, she like’. I warn you. Miss Berenicia. Berne.”

“Right-o! I’ll try not to offend. Camille La iGrande! Anyway, from what you tell me, Flame doesn’t suit this frigid young person. No wonder she doesn’t like it.”

'‘Non. You have right. It is amazing how she have no enthusiasm, that young creature. All for business, management, all control! Only for the birds!”

“Birds?”

“Si. She adores tham. Fonny, that girl.”

Dan half-rose, quickly. “Will you pardon me?” he said. He must use this wonderful thing, this lively interest, before it left him, as it was sure soon to do.

“You go speak with Berenicia? You think she will have remember’ so long?” doubtingly, with a deterring hand.

“Scarcely. But she must have heard about me. If she doesn’t recall, I’ll summon you to the rescue. If you please!”

“Ohh! Too bad! I regret. Here is my place. I must leave. You must surely, surely come stay a long time at our house,— Gai-Da! Pass me your word.”

“Thank you! If I can.”

“Ah, bon! Now, I will kiss you,—so! I have wanted to do this for ten miles, my son,—so, on

H the curls, hein? And the good saints send you back your health, son of Olivier Barde!”

She left him, dimpling at him, waved a chubby hand. But, once outside, she murmured to her¬ self, “Maude Barde! She has now this beautiful son of Olivier. She, who ran away and left him in his childhood! My poor Olivier,—who would be so, so proud of this son!—he is dead. Me, I am childless. They have strange blessings, these selfish women. Even life himself they can cajole.”

Daniel made ready to address Miss La Grande. It was a risky thing to do; suppose she had for¬ gotten, had never heard of him! Oh! Everybody hereabouts had heard of everybody else. It would be all right, or Mme. Boutin would have forbidden it.

Come what might, it was worth a rebuff, this doing something on his own initiative, this wanting to do it.

Emotionless. Rather alluring to meet that kind of a girl just now; the War and his decorations and illness had made all his own world of women so sloppy. Couldn’t feel; eh? That was funny, too; Flame had had the temper of a small fiend as a child.

He walked beyond the girl’s seat, turned back, facing her.

There was no one sitting beside her. He would sit there himself and then begin inconspicuously,

THE GIRL WHO COUI^D NOT FEEL 15

make it easier for her to ignore him if she wanted to.

She wouldn’t, though; somehow, he knew she wouldn’t.

But Daniel did not carry out this program. He did not even sit beside Camille Berenicia Marie.

He stopped a moment, regarded her, then slowly went back to his former place.

For, as he came toward this girl, who, he had twice been told, so lacked emotion, he saw that her hands were clenched, pressing hard on the brim of the hat she held in her lap; that her eyes were closed, her lips,—even that firmly held lower one,— quivering piteously; and over the white softness of her cheek a tear moved slowly.

Chapter II

T HE uneven road ran, or better, loitered, along a coulee f —a little branch bayou, deep as a moat, seldom wider than a brook, often not as wide; winding and beguiling as a brook, but placid and quiet-watered, almost as still as a pool. It was only by watching the cherokee rosepetals that glided like becalmed elfin craft upon its surface that the waters could be seen to move.

Tranquille was the name of the coulee, and tran¬ quilly the banks of young Southern maple, water oak and willow arched gentle arms above it. Bud¬ ded iris had stepped into the stream out of a tangle of the pink-tipped foliage of the trumpet-vine. On the stump of an old cypress in the water, a new little crown of green twigs was resting. In the center of this fairy ring, a turtle slept.

Berne watched the turtle a moment from the humpy little road, then turned, with a shadow of reluctance, to the old gate facing the stream.

Over the span of the gateway an intertwining of wistaria and jasmine vines,—the white wistaria still in bloom,—made an arch between two sentinel oleanders rubescent with buds.

Both vines and shrubs were hopelessly in need of trimming, but Berne wound several branches back upon themselves in a futile effort for order. So, too, she brushed away leaves from the gate-step with an impatient foot. With dissatisfaction she looked up the path, between the overgrown ranks of the lush shell-lily plants that bordered it. As one does, returning after an absence to a well-known spot, she glanced over house and grove and garden, seeing them with freshened vision.

The wide, sweeping lawns were unkempt; piles of old moss from the great live-oaks lay everywhere. Moss had fallen from these higher trees to the lower ones, clinging even to the smooth leaves of palms and bananas; the very telephone-wire w r as roped with gray moss. The flower-beds were so over-grown with tall grass that now the Castilian roses and red lilies were growing not in beds at all but in the grass itself, wherever they did not stand knee-deep in vagabond ivy. The evergreens were rusty for want of pruning; the orange trees had all gone to leaf and branch; vines had taken possession of the corrugated towers of dead or dying datepalms. Only the oaks and magnolias, a noble hackberry and the gay little onyx Japan-plum trees seemed to have escaped the general aura of shabbi¬ ness; and even some of the oaks were being de¬ voured by the insidious teeth of mistletoe.

The house was old-fashioned, brick, painted white,—but the white had peeled in many places,— i8 with a yellow-plaster front and yellow-plaster Doric columns. An outside stairway led, through a riot of wistaria, from the brick terrace to an upper shuttered gallery,—shuttered except where the blinds had been torn away by the weight of the vines.

“Sweet place to invite any one to!” said Berne.

Then she glanced upward with sudden pleasure.

“Well, my little ones, your houses are all proper, anyway,” she said.

On trees and porch and broken arbors were bird-houses, a veritable colony of them, rustic-finish cabinlets and cottages shiny with paint. Berne watched the little dwellings a moment, hoping for a glimpse of perky head or darting wing, before she pushed open the heavy front door.

The great room was agreeably shadowy and cool on this warm spring day. It extended the full depth of the house; a doorway at the rear led to a vista of untended garden; and, beyond the garden in the distance, the eye was pleasantly conscious of the broad waters of Bayou Vermilion. The room, beautifully furnished in the sturdiest of the styles of Napoleon’s Empire, though now out at elbows, was exquisitely cared for. Little red Louis-Philippe roses, in a great glass bowl, perfumed it.

At a small escritoire in one window, a young man in fashionable riding clothes was writing a letter, his head bent above it. He heard the door open, but did not indicate that he had done so. Berne caught that under lip in her teeth as she regarded him.

In the other window, seated upon its broad ledge, an older man was smoking a carved meerschaum. He wore a rusty black silk dressing gown and morocco slippers that had once been red. He was well-made, graceful, agreeable to the eye; his irongray hair too vigorous for a face of pallid delicacy. His hands were nervous. He sat restlessly as if he were half minded to rise. A small, empty coffee-cup was beside him.

He did rise as his daughter entered, rose with an emphasis that brought the young man also up¬ right for a moment.

“Fiammetta, my dear,” said her father as she kissed him. “It’s good to have you home again.”

“ ’Lo, Camille,” said the red-haired young man at the desk, resuming his note. “Did you walk up ?”

“Naturally. There was no one to meet me. Where are Uncle Hope and the mule-cart?”

“I don’t know. Ovide took the buggy to Cureville to be re-tired. And your horse.—”

“Oh, that’s all right!—Feeling pretty well, Commodore?” to her father.

“Why,—well enough, well enough. Horribly busy, of course. So much to think of,—to do.”

Berne caught her lip. “I know, honey,” she said, avoiding the wink of the wicked brown eye the red-haired youth raised above the desk.

“What sort of a time did you have, sweetness?” asked the senior La Grande.

“A hellish time,” said Berne.

Her father raised his hands, shocked, but smiling.

Landry looked up.

“Camille, I do wish you wouldn’t,” he said peevishly. “Please try to speak like a lady, at least, if you can’t act like one.”

“All right, brother,” calmly. “I thought maybe it was time for somebody around here to speak and act like a man.”

Her father laughed, clapped his hands softly; he knew that her rejoinder had no reference to him. He glanced roguishly at his son, who kept on writ¬ ing.

“I had a highly uncomfortable time, Commo¬ dore,” Berne amended, sitting beside him. “They did not want to extend the note again. Mr. Au¬ guste said he thought—the bank thought—”

“But they did extend it,” Mr. La Grande said hurriedly, eager to avoid hearing what he did not like to hear. “They did extend it. Never mind the unpleasant preliminaries. All over now, dear¬ est! You’re a wonderful little lady. And you were right, my dear, as usual. It was much better for us to go and see them. So sorry I couldn’t do it myself! My health,—and the work on this plantation—”

“Yes, sir,” said his son. “Too bad you didn’t go! Much more dignified. I simply couldn’t afford to, now. You told them I didn’t know any¬ thing about it, Camille?”

“No, Landry. I didn’t.”

“I asked you to ! Why—”

“Not my way. However, I don’t believe Mr. Auguste thought of you at all. Don’t worry. No¬ body but me thought you ought to have gone.—Give me that coffee-cup, Commodore.”

u No; leave it. Tiny will come for it.”

“Tiny has so much to do, dear!”

“That’s true. I keep forgetting how few ser¬ vants,—how times have changed for us.”

“That’s right, darling. Do forget it.”

She took the cup and left them.

Her brother put down his pen. “Will you tell me, sir, how the Mater ever was the mother of a daughter like that? Why, there’s no girl in her!”

His father smiled cryptically, an enigmatic ex¬ pression that always drove Landry mad. “It doesn’t mean a thing, and you know it doesn’t; yet you can’t help wondering what it means,” he often complained to his sympathetic mother.

Berne came back into the doorway, the cup still in her hand.

“Oh! I forgot to tell you, Commodore. Dan¬ iel Barde is in the parish. You remember Gai-Dat I saw him on the train.”

“And knew him? Why, you were an infant— 1

“Oh, of course, I shouldn’t have if I hadn’t heard about his coming when I was in New Orleans.”

“Did you look for the scar on his forehead?” Landry asked teasingly.

Her color heightened. “No,” she answered.

“Pardon, sis! That was mean.—Dan’s coming 'will interest Mater,” Landry added with a sly inflection.

“On my account, you mean? Oh, no! Dan’s not as eligible as Martin.” ,

“What a thing to say! Haven’t you any delicacy, Camille?”

“Oh, come, my dear fellow! You know that’s what you meant. Dan was looking awfully knocked up, Commodore. The war got to him they say.”

“So, my dear? We must ask him here.”

“Whatever Mater says. He used to love to come when he was little. But he’ll have more fun, other places, I’m afraid.”

“That’s true, sir. Why can’t I put him up later at the club in town instead?”

“This is our home, my son. Are you ashamed of the old place?” The sweetish tenor of Mr. La Grande’s voice grew plaintive.

“The place is all right,” said Berne. “It’s what hasn’t been done for it Landry's ashamed of.”

Then she looked at her brother, smiled with sudden tenderness; she was lovely when she smiled. She went over to him put her hand on his shoulder, leaned her cheek against his hair.

“Forgive me, Lanny dear. I’m a beast to you. I’m sorry. But I’ve had a—very difficult time and come home cranky. Let’s not scrap, buddy. Pax? }

He covered her hand with his. “Surely old girl. But, you see how it is, Camille. You must watch your disposition. 1 ou realize afterwards, but—”

*0 Lord! What’s the use?” said Berne, and went out with the cup.

The back of the house was shaped like three sides of a square, with wooden cloistered corridors making an incomplete patio.

Berne took the cup to the kitchen wing.

“How-dye, Singsie!” She spoke to the young brown cook in charge there.

“Well, hyere comes Missy! Shall I draw you a cup o’ coffee, Missy? You sho’ looks all tuckered out. Po’ li’l lamb! You works too hard; you’s got too much to think about. ’Taint no use fo’ de brain o’ man to use itse’f up thinkin’. Set down, pretty, out yonder in de hammock and let yo’ Singsie do somethin’ fo’ you.”

“You’ve done something for me already, Singsie.” She smiled her rare smile. “Just what I needed.”

“Ain’t done nothin’ yet,” in surprise.

“Well, give me some coffee, please. And a cookie. Oh! That smells good! Nobody makes coffee like Singsie,—not even at Antoine’s in the city.”

“Oh, you go along, Missy!” she giggled, de¬ lighted. “You’s just a-buzzin’ me; isn’t you,?”

“Not a bit. It’s true. I’ll sit here and drink it; I want to talk to you, Singsie.”

“Now, looky hyere, Missy! Is you gwine pester me again, talkin’ about wages? ’Cause if’n you is, I isn’t gwine listen at it; ’deed I ain’t. \ ou just go on keepin’ dem wages fo’ me, ’cause I hasn’t got no manner of use fo’ money. Ain’t I’s got a neat li’l cabin out yonder in de yard fo’ me and ma Maw to live in? Ain’t you always guv me ma contribution fo’ de contribution-plate to pay dat lazy Reverend on Sunday fo’ loafin’ all week? Ain’t I’s got good calico dresses, and feastin’ on de fat o’ de land? What-for I wants money? Ma sakes! If’n I had all dat money I’d likely be fool-headed enough to buy me a man and git married,” she laughed. “And never have another thing to call ma own as long as I live, fo’ever,—amen!”