d only to interrupt the torrent of her reproaches, with a groan, and a
twist of his fat abdomen, and "oh, honey, I'm so bad in my stomach!"
and she was transformed, in an instant from a Xantippe into a Florence
Nightingale: the whole current of her wrath deviated from him to the
last meal he had eaten, whatever it might be.

"Now, it's jist nothin' but that pesky bacon you ate this mornin',
Caesar: you sha'n't never touch a bit again's long's you live; do you
hear?" and with hot water and flannels, she would proceed to comfort and
coddle him as if no anger had ever stirred her heart.

When she saw poor Sarah Little sink crying into a chair, and heard the
humble gratefulness of her words; and, moreover, felt herself, as it
were, distinctly taken into confidence by the implied reference to the
unhappy past,--old Nan melted.

"There, there, honey: don't ye take on so. We're jest powerful glad to
get you here, we be. I was a tellin' Miss Hetty yesterday she couldn't
live here alone, noways: we couldn't any of us stand it. Come along
into the dinin'-room, an' Caesar he'll give you a glass of his blackberry
wine. Caesar won't let anybody but hisself touch the blackberry wine, an'
hain't this twenty year."

"Here, Caesar! you, Caesar! where be yer? Come right in here, you loafin'
niggah." This was Nan's most affectionate nickname for her husband; it
was always accompanied with a glance of proud admiration, which was
the key to the seemingly opprobrious epithet, and revealed that all
it really meant was a complacent satisfaction in her breast that her
husband was in a position to loaf if he liked to,--a gentleman of
leisure and dignity, so to speak, subject to no orders but her own.

Caesar could hardly believe his ears when he heard himself called upon to
bring a glass of his blackberry wine to Mrs. Sarah Little. This was
not at all in keeping with the line of conduct which Nan had announced
beforehand that she should pursue in regard to that lady. Bewildered by
his perplexed meditations on this change of policy, he moved even more
slowly than was his wont, and was presently still more bewildered
by finding the glass snatched suddenly from his hand, with a sharp
reprimand from Nan.

"You're asleep, ain't you? p'raps you'd better go back to bed, seein'
it's nigh noon."

"There, honey, you jest drink this, an' it'll do you good," came in the
next second from the same lips, in such dulcet tones, that Caesar rubbed
his hea