the pleasant summer
afternoons, were puzzled to find the old place almost unchanged. Why
any woman in her senses wanted to live among those early-Victorian
horrors, the women of Santa Paloma could not imagine. But Mrs. Burgoyne
never apologized for the old walnut chairs and tables, and the old
velvet carpets, and the hopelessly old-fashioned white lace curtains
and gilt-framed mirrors. Even Captain Holly's big clock--"an impossibly
hideous thing," Mrs. White called the frantic bronze horses and the
clinging tiger, on their onyx hillside--was serenely ticking, and the
pink china vases were filled with flowers. And there was an air of such
homely comfort, after all, about the big rooms, such a fragrance of
flowers, and flood of sunny fresh air, that the whole effect was not
half as bad as it might be imagined; indeed, when Mammy Curry, the
magnificent old negress who was supreme in the kitchen and respected in
the nursery as well, came in with her stiff white apron and silver
tea-tray, she seemed to fit into the picture, and add a completing
touch to the whole.

Very simply, very unpretentiously, the new mistress of Holly Hall
entered upon her new life. She was a woman of very quiet tastes,
devoted to her little girls, her music, her garden and her books. With
the negress, she had one other servant, a quiet little New England
girl, with terrified, childish eyes, and a passionate devotion to her
mistress and all that concerned her mistress. Fanny had in charge a
splendid, tawny-headed little boy of three, who played happily by
himself, about the kitchen door, and chased chickens and kittens with
shrieks of delight. Mrs. Burgoyne spoke of him as "Fanny's little
brother," and if the two had a history of any sort, it was one at which
she never hinted. She met an embarrassing question with a readiness
which rather amused Mrs. Brown, on a day when the two younger ladies
were having tea with Mrs. Apostleman, and the conversation turned to
the subject of maids.

"--but if your little girl Fanny has had her lesson, you'll have no
trouble keepin' her," said Mrs. Apostleman.

"Oh, I hope I shall keep Fanny," said Mrs. Burgoyne, "she comes of such
nice people, and she's such a sweet, good girl."

"Why, Lord save us!" said the old lady, repentantly, "and I was almost
ready to believe the child was hers!"

"If Peter was hers, she couldn't be fonder of him!" Mrs. Burgoyne said
mildly, and Mrs. Brown choked on her tea, and had to w