d toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway
she stopped, suddenly. She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown--a
cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic
figures. She surveyed it wistfully, longingly.

"Hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it's just lovely." Then she
nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added, "No, I ain't
gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in dis mis'able ole
linsey-woolsey."

She put down the child and made the change. She looked in the glass and
was astonished at her beauty. She resolved to make her death toilet
perfect. She took off her handkerchief turban and dressed her glossy
wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather
lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she
threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day,
which was of a blazing red complexion. Then she was ready for the tomb.

She gathered up her baby once more; but when her eye fell upon its
miserably short little gray tow-linen shirt and noted the contrast
between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic eruption of infernal
splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was ashamed.

"No, dolling mammy ain't gwine to treat you so. De angels is gwine to
'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy. Ain't gwine to have 'em
putt'n dey han's up 'fo' dey eyes en sayin' to David and Goliah en dem
yuther prophets, 'Dat chile is dress' to indelicate fo' dis place.'"

By this time she had stripped off the shirt. Now she clothed the naked
little creature in one of Thomas `a Becket's snowy, long baby gowns, with
its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles.

"Dah--now you's fixed." She propped the child in a chair and stood off
to inspect it. Straightway her eyes begun to widen with astonishment and
admiration, and she clapped her hands and cried out, "Why, it do beat
all! I _never_ knowed you was so lovely. Marse Tommy ain't a bit
puttier--not a single bit."

She stepped over and glanced at the other infant; she flung a glance
back at her own; then one more at the heir of the house. Now a strange
light dawned in her eyes, and in a moment she was lost in thought. She
seemed in a trance; when she came out of it, she muttered, "When I 'uz
a-washin' 'em in de tub, yistiddy, he own pappy asked me which of 'em was
his'n."

She began to move around like one in