ud piece," almost
putting her down on a level with "poor white trash," which wuz the
deepest depth her plummet of contumely could reach. And she described
her as holding her son by her apron string, as she termed it.

She said he had been home this summer on bizness down South and had come
to see her, which Billy said wuz true, a very handsome and elegant young
gentleman having called twice to see his old nurse during the spring and
summer.

She said he come to see her on his arrival at St. Louis on some bizness
connected with the Fair, and then he santered off to Saratoga for a few
weeks, and then on to ole Virginny and New Zealand, and then back to St.
Louis to attend to his bizness agin about the Fair. She said he wuz pale
and sad the last time she see him, and she mistrusted his ma had been
cuttin' up. She sez:

"You know she _lacks_." That wuz Aunt Tryphena's greatest condemnation
to say folks lacked. She never told what they lacked, but left it to the
imagination of the hearer; from her expression you would imagine they
lacked all the cardinal virtues and them that wuzn't cardinal. She said
his ma wuz sick and kep' the Prince right under her feet, and he'd gone
back now to be with her leaving St. Louis only a week or so before we
come.

Bein' asked why she left Miss Louise she wuz more reticent, only
remarking that after Prince Arthur went to college she wanted a change,
so she had strolled over to South America, and from there to Asia and so
on to Chicago where she wuz hired as nurse to Miss Dotie, and when her
ma died and the child wuz taken by its great-aunt, Miss Huff, she had
been willing to help the latter through the Exposition, for she wuz a
nice woman and didn't lack.

But we could see that her real reason wuz to be with the child--faithful
creeter she wuz, though queer, queer as they make. And to see the little
creature's white snow and rose face resting lovingly and confidingly
aginst the black cheeks, you knew that Aunt Tryphena had good in her.
Little children are good detectives, like the sun that photographs
hidden virtues and failings in the human face, so a child's intuition
brought from the heaven they have so lately left, takes the best
impressions of a person's real character. Children and animals live so
near Nature's heart they can detect real diamonds from the false, no
paste glitter can deceive 'em. Aunt Pheeny had qualities, or Dotie
wouldn't have loved her so well, and I felt it a g