ce, where they were eventually betrayed by subterranean giggling
that had once or twice brought bashful confusion to the hearts of Miss
Sally's admirers, and mischievous security to that finished coquette
herself.

It was a pleasant September afternoon, on possibly one of these
occasions, that Miss Sally, sitting before the piano, alternately
striking a few notes with three pink fingers and glancing at her
reflection in the polished rosewood surface of the lifted keyboard case,
was heard to utter this languid protest:--

"Quit that kind of talk, Chet, unless you just admire to have every word
of it repeated all over the county. Those little niggers of Mammy Judy's
are lying round somewhere and are mighty 'cute, and sassy, I tell you.
It's nothin' to ME, sure, but Miss Hilda mightn't like to hear of it. So
soon after your particular attention to her at last night's pawty too."

Here a fresh-looking young fellow of six-and-twenty, leaning uneasily
over the piano from the opposite side, was heard to murmur that he
didn't care what Miss Hilda heard, nor the whole world, for the matter
of that. "But," he added, with a faint smile, "folks allow that you know
how to PLAY UP sometimes, and put on the loud pedal, when you don't want
Mammy's niggers to hear."

"Indeed," said the young lady demurely. "Like this?"

She put out a distracting little foot, clothed in the white stocking and
cool black prunella slipper then de rigueur in the State, and, pressing
it on the pedal, began to drum vigorously on the keys. In vain the
amorous Chet protested in a voice which the instrument drowned.
Perceiving which the artful young lady opened her blue eyes mildly and
said:--

"I reckon it IS so; it DOES kind of prevent you hearing what you don't
want to hear."

"You know well enough what I mean," said the youth gloomily. "And that
ain't all that folks say. They allow that you're doin' a heap too much
correspondence with that Californian rough that killed Tom Jeffcourt
over there."

"Do they?" said the young lady, with a slight curl of her pretty lip.
"Then perhaps they allow that if it wasn't for me he wouldn't be sending
a hundred dollars a month to Aunt Martha?"

"Yes," said the fatuous youth; "but they allow he killed Tom for his
money. And they do say it's mighty queer doin's in yo' writin' religious
letters to him, and Tom your own cousin."

"Oh, they tell those lies HERE, do they? But do they say anything about
how, when the