r husband and her
other sons her slaves, and she remembered now, with a sense of comfort,
that she had another servitor.

"My shoe is unbuttoned"--she raised her small foot--"button it, Tony."

The boy fell on his knees, eager to offer his first service to the
lovely woman, but his hands were awkward. He bungled and pinched the
delicate skin. The mother cried out, leaned over and smartly boxed his
ears.

"Stupid boy, go; send me Emmeline."

Poor Antony retired, and as Emmeline took his place he heard his mother
murmur--

"Aren't the cherries ripe yet, Emmy? I'm dying to taste some cherries,
they're so delicious in the North."

Emmeline had fastened the shoe and lagged away with southern negligence,
leaving Antony's books as he had flung them on the porch, and though it
was an effort to lean over, Mrs. Fairfax did so, picked up the
drawing-book and studied it again.

"Talented little monkey," she mused, "he has my gift, my looks too, I
think. How straight he walks! He has '_l'elegance d'un homme du
monde_.'"

She called herself Creole and prided herself on her French and her
languor.

She sat musing thus, the book on her knees, when half an hour later they
carried him in to her. He had fallen from a rotten branch on the highest
cherry tree in the grounds.

He struck on his hip.

All night she sat by his side. The surgeons had told her that he would
be a cripple for life if he ever walked again. Toward morning he
regained his senses and saw her sitting there. Mrs. Fairfax remembered
Antony that day. She remembered him that day and that night, and his cry
of "Oh, mother, I was getting the cherries for you!"

* * * * *

Before they built him his big, awkward boot, when he walked again at
all, Antony went about on crutches, debarred from boyish games. In order
to forget his fellows and the school-yard and "the street" he modelled
in the soft delicious clay, making hosts of creatures, figures, heads
and arms and hands, and brought them in damp from the clay of the levee.
His own small room was a studio, peopled by his young art. No sooner,
however, was he strong again and his big shoe built up, than his
boy-self was built up as well, and Antony, lame, limping Antony, was out
again with his mates. He never again could run as they did, but he
contrived to fence and spar and box, and strangely enough, he grew tall
and strong. One day he came into his little room from a ball game,