is candy. Tell yer, dis whup,
she's got a daisy snapper on 'er, gran'dad! She's wuth a dozen o' deze
heah white-boy _w'ips_, she is!"

The last thing Mose heard as Duke descended the levee that morning was
the crack of the new whip; and he said, as he filled his pipe, "De idee
o' dat little tar-baby o' mine fetchin' me a Christmas-gif'!"

It was past noon when Duke got home again, bearing upon his shoulder,
like a veritable little Santa Claus himself, a half-filled coffee-sack,
the joint results of his service in the market and of the generosity of
its autocrats.

The latter had evidently measured their gratuities by the size of their
beneficiary, as their gifts were very small. Still, as the little fellow
emptied the sack upon the floor, they made quite a tempting display.
There were oranges, apples, bananas, several of each; a bunch of
soup-greens, scraps of fresh meat--evidently butchers' "trimmings"--odds
and ends of vegetables; while in the midst of the melee three live crabs
struck out in as many directions for freedom.

They were soon landed in a pot; while Mose, who was really no mean cook,
was preparing what seemed a sumptuous mid-day meal.

Late in the afternoon, while Mose nodded in his chair, Duke sat in the
open doorway, stuffing the last banana into his little stomach, which
was already as tight as a kettle-drum. He had cracked his whip until he
was tired, but he still kept cracking it. He cracked it at every fly
that lit on the floor, at the motes that floated into the shaft of
sunlight before him, at special knots in the door-sill, or at nothing,
as the spirit moved him. A sort of holiday feeling, such as he felt on
Sundays, had kept him at home this afternoon. If he had known that to be
a little too full of good things and a little tired of cracking whips or
tooting horns or drumming was the happy condition of most of the rich
boys of the land at that identical moment, he could not have been more
content than he was. If his stomach ached just a little, he thought of
all the good things in it, and was rather pleased to have it ache--just
this little. It emphasized his realization of Christmas.

As the evening wore on, and the crabs and bananas and molasses-candy
stopped arguing with one another down in his little stomach, he found
himself thinking, with some pleasure, of the pan of scraps he was to get
for his grandfather, and he wished for the hour when he should go. He
was glad when at last the o