ith his hands full
of cherries, who came to a sudden demoralized stop in the embarrassing
foreground.

"Raph!" thundered the doctor. "Didn't I tell you to go back to that
kitchen?"

"Yas, suh," responded the imp. "But yo' didn' tell me ter stay dar!"

"If I see you out here again," roared the doctor, "I'll tie your ears
back--and _grease_ you--and SWALLOW you!" At which grisly threat, the
apparition, with a shrill shriek, turned and ran desperately for the
corner of the house.

"I hear," said the doctor, resuming, "that the young man who came to fix
the place up has hired Uncle Jefferson and his wife to help him. Who's
responsible for that interesting information?"

"Rickey Snyder," said Mrs. Mason. "She's got a spy-glass rigged up in a
sugar-tree at Miss Mattie Sue's and she saw them pottering around there
this morning."

"Little _limb_!" exclaimed Mrs. Gifford, with emphasis. "She's as cheeky
as a town-hog. I can't imagine what Shirley Dandridge was thinking of
when she brought that low-born child out of her sphere."

Something like a growl came from the doctor as he struck open the
screen-door. "'Limb!' I'll bet ten dollars she's an angel in a
cedar-tree at a church fair compared with some better-born young ones
I know of who are only fit to live when they've got the scarlet-fever
and who ought to be in the reformatory long ago. And as for Shirley
Dandridge, it's my opinion she and her mother and a few others like
her have got about the only drops of the milk of human kindness in
this whole abandoned community!"

"Dreadful man!" said Mrs. Gifford, sotto voce, as the door banged
viciously. "To think of his being born a Southall! Sometimes I can't
believe it!"

Mrs. Mason shook her head and smiled. "Ah, but that isn't the real
Doctor Southall," she said. "That's only his shell."

"I've heard that he has another side," responded the other with guarded
grimness, "but if he has, I wish he'd manage to show it sometimes."

Mrs. Mason took off her glasses and wiped them carefully. "I saw it when
my husband died," she said softly. "That was before you came. They were
old friends, you know. He was sick almost a year, and the doctor used to
carry him out here on the porch every day in his arms, like a child. And
then, when the typhus came that summer among the negroes, he quarantined
himself with them--the only white man there--and treated and nursed them
and buried the dead with his own hands, till it was stamped