don't die."

"Well, I wish I was a trick nigger, then," remarked Dumps, gravely.

"Lordy, Miss Dumps, yer'd better not be er talkin' like dat," said
Dilsey, her eyes open wide in horror. "Hit's pow'ful wicked ter be trick
niggers."

"I don't know what's the matter with Dumps," said Diddie; "she's
gettin' ter be so sinful; an' ef she don't stop it, I sha'n't sleep with
her. She'll be er breakin' out with the measles or sump'n some uv these
days, jes fur er judgment on her; an' I don't want ter be catchin' no
judgments just on account of her badness."

"Well, I'll take it back, Diddie," humbly answered Dumps. "I didn't know
it was wicked; and won't you sleep with me now?"

Diddie having promised to consider the matter, the little folks walked
slowly on to the house, Dilsey and Chris and Riar all taking turns in
telling them the wonderful spells and cures and troubles that Daddy Jake
had wrought with his "trick-bags."

CHAPTER XVII.

WHAT BECAME OF THEM.

Well, of course, I can't tell you _all_ that happened to these little
girls. I have tried to give you some idea of how they lived in their
Mississippi home, and I hope you have been amused and entertained; and
now, as "Diddie" said about _her_ book, I've got to "wind up," and tell
you what became of them.

The family lived happily on the plantation until the war broke out in
1861.

Then Major Waldron clasped his wife to his heart, kissed his daughters,
shook hands with his faithful slaves, and went as a soldier to Virginia;
and he is sleeping now on the slope of Malvern Hill, where he

"Nobly died for Dixie."

The old house was burned during the war, and on the old plantation where
that happy home once stood there are now three or four chimneys and an
old tumbled-down gin-house. That is all.

The agony of those terrible days of war, together with the loss of her
husband and home, broke the heart and sickened the brain of Mrs.
Waldron; and in the State Lunatic Asylum is an old white-haired woman,
with a weary, patient look in her eyes, and this gentle old woman, who
sits day after day just looking out at the sunshine and the flowers, is
the once beautiful "mamma" of Diddie, Dumps, and Tot.

Diddie grew up to be a very pretty, graceful woman, and when the war
began was in her eighteenth year. She was engaged to one of the young
men in the neighborhood; and, though she was so young, her father
consented to the marriage, as her lover was going into t