xclaimed, raising her hands, "you's jess a-sottin'
dar, an' breakin' your poor heart. Don't I know when you is a-makin'
believe? Mebbe dis night is de las' we'll ever see you in your own warm,
nice kitchen, an' never mo', dear ole marster, kin Hominy brile you a
bird or season de soup you like. Bless God, dis time we'll git de squab
an' de celery an' de toast, befo' ole Meshach Milburn measures all we
got in!"

While the children crawled around the Judge's knees, setting up a dismal
wail to see him sob, the two neat house girls, forgetting every
contingency to themselves, sobbed also, like his own daughters, to see
him unmanned; but Aunt Hominy only felt desperately energetic at the
chance to cook the last supper of the Custis household.

She lighted a brand of pine in the fire, and started one of the stable
boys up a ladder by its light to ransack the pigeon-cote, and in a very
little while both a chicken and a bird were broiled and set upon the
kitchen-table upon a spotless cloth, and the plume of lily-white celery,
and the smoking toast in velvet cream, warmed the Judge's nostrils, and
dried his tears.

Roxy stood behind him to wait upon his wishes; Virgie subdued every
expression of grief, and comforted the children, and poor Aunt Hominy,
with silent tears streaming down her cheeks to see him eat and suffer,
kept up a clatter of epicurean talk, lest he might turn and see her
miserable. As he finished his meal, and took out his gold tooth-pick,
and felt a comfortable joy of such misery and sympathy, Vesta opened the
door, and said:

"Papa!"

"My child?"

"Let me speak with you."

Judge Custis rose, and raised his hands to Aunt Hominy in speechless
recognition of her service; but not till the door closed behind him did
the old cook's cry burst through her quivering lips:

"Oh! chillen, chillen, he'll never eat no mo' like dat again. Ole
Meshach's measured him in!"

CHAPTER XI.

DYING PRIDE.

At the termination of Milburn's long visit, Vesta had gone to her own
room, and read her passage in the Bible, and said her prayer, and tried
to think, but the day's application had been too great to leave her mind
its morning energy, when health, which is so much of decision, was
elastic in her veins and brain.

She began to see her duty loom up like a prodigious thing on one side,
crowding every other consideration out of the way but one--her modesty;
and threatening that, which, like a little mouse, ran