shillings a day for
twelve days or more seemed like a fortune to Adah, and so she tore
herself away from Willie's clinging arms and went willingly to labor for
the capricious 'Lina, ten times more impatient and capricious since she
"had come into possession of property."

Womanlike, the sight of 'Lina's dresses awoke in Adah a thrill of
delight, and she entered heartily into the matter without a single
feeling of envy.

"I's goin', too. Did you know that?" Lulu said to her as she sat bending
over a cloud of lace and soft blue silk.

"Do you want to go?" Adah asked, and Lulu replied:

"Not much. Miss 'Lina will be so lofty. Jes' you listen and hear her
call me oncet. 'Ho Loo-loo, come quick,' jes' as if she done nothin' all
her life but order a nigger 'round. I knows better. I knows how she done
made her own bed, combed her own ha'r, and like enough washed her own
rags afore she comed here. Yes, 'Loo-loo is coming,'" and the saucy
wench darted off to 'Lina screaming loudly for her.

"Miss Worthington," Adah said, timidly, as 'Lina came near, "Lulu tells
me she is going North with you. Why not take me instead of her?"

"You!" and 'Lina's black eyes flashed scornfully. "What in the world
could I do with you and that child, and what would people think? Why,
I'd rather have Lulu forty times. A negro gives an _eclat_ to one's
position which a white servant cannot. By the way, here is Miss
Tiffton's square-necked bertha. She's just got home from New York, and
says they are all the fashion. You are to cut me a pattern. There's a
paper, the Louisville _Journal_, I guess, but nobody reads it, now Hugh
is gone," and with a few more general directions, 'Lina hurried away
leaving Adah so hot, so disappointed, that the hot tears fell upon the
paper she took in her hand, the paper containing Anna Richards'
advertisement, intended solely for the poor girl sitting so lonely and
sad at Spring Bank that summer morning.

In spite of the doctor's predictions and consignment of that girl to
Georgia, or some warmer place, it had reached her at last. She did not
see it at first, so fast her tears fell, but just as her scissors were
raised to cut the pattern her eyes fell on the spot headed, "A Curious
Advertisement," and suspending her operations for a moment, she read it
through, a feeling rising in her heart that it was surely an answer to
her own advertisement, sent forth months ago, with tearful prayers that
it might be successful