?"

The Governor smiled; but catching his wife's eyes, he quickly forced his
benign features into a frowning mask.

"Do as your aunt tells you, Betty," said Mrs. Ambler, and Betty got up and
said grace, while Virginia took the brownest waffle. When the thanksgiving
was ended, she turned indignantly upon her sister. "That was just a sly,
mean trick!" she cried in a flash of temper. "You saw my eye on that
waffle!"

"My dear, my dear," murmured Miss Lydia.

"She's des an out'n out fire bran', dat's w'at she is," said Uncle
Shadrach.

"Well, the Lord oughtn't to have let her take it just as I was thanking Him
for it!" sobbed Betty, and she burst into tears and left the table,
upsetting Mr. Bill's coffee cup as she went by.

The Governor looked gravely after her. "I'm afraid the child is really
getting spoiled, Julia," he mildly suggested.

"She's getting a--a vixenish," declared Mr. Bill, mopping his expansive
white waistcoat.

"You des better lemme go atter a twig er willow, Marse Peyton," muttered
Uncle Shadrach in the Governor's ear.

"Hold your tongue, Shadrach," retorted the Governor, which was the harshest
command he was ever known to give his servants.

Virginia ate her waffle and said nothing. When she went upstairs a little
later, she carried a pitcher of buttermilk for Betty's face.

"It isn't usual for a young lady to have freckles, Aunt Lydia says," she
remarked, "and you must rub this right on and not wash it off till
morning--and, after you've rubbed it well in, you must get down on your
knees and ask God to mend your temper."

Betty was lying in her little trundle bed, while Petunia, her small black
maid, pulled off her stockings, but she got up obediently and laved her
face in buttermilk. "I don't reckon there's any use about the other," she
said. "I believe the Lord's jest leavin' me in sin as a warnin' to you and
Petunia," and she got into her trundle bed and waited for the lights to go
out, and for the watchful Virginia to fall asleep.

She was still waiting when the door softly opened and her mother came in, a
lighted candle in her hand, the pale flame shining through her profile as
through delicate porcelain, and illumining her worn and fragile figure. She
moved with a slow step, as if her white limbs were a burden, and her head,
with its smoothly parted bright brown hair, bent like a lily that has begun
to fade.

She sat down upon the bedside and laid her hand on the child's forehead.