tase, en ef'n you don' come
'long down, dey'll fall right flat."

"Who is Sis Rhody?" inquired the boy, as he splashed the water on his face.

"Who she? Why, she de cook."

"All right, tell her I'm coming," and he dressed hurriedly and ran down
into the hall where he found Champe Lightfoot, the Major's great-nephew,
who lived at Chericoke.

"Hello!" called Champe at once, plunging his hands into his pockets and
presenting an expression of eager interest. "When did you get here?"

"Last night," Dan replied, and they stood staring at each other with two
pairs of the Lightfoot gray eyes.

"How'd you come?"

"I walked some and I came part the way on a steamboat. Did you ever see a
steamboat?"

"Oh, shucks! A steamboat ain't anything. I've seen George Washington's
sword. Do you like to fish?"

"I never fished. I lived in a city."

Zeke came in with a can of worms, and Champe gave them the greater share of
his attention. "I tell you what, you'd better learn," he said at last,
returning the can to Zeke and taking up his fishing-rod. "There're a lot of
perch down yonder in the river," and he strode out, followed by the small
negro.

Dan looked after him a moment, and then went into the dining room, where
his grandmother was sitting at the head of her table, washing her pink
teaset in a basin of soapsuds. She wore her stiff, black silk this morning
with its dainty undersleeves of muslin, and her gray curls fell beneath her
cap of delicate yellowed lace. "Come and kiss me, child," she said as he
entered. "Did you sleep well?"

"I didn't wake once," answered the boy, kissing her wrinkled cheek.

"Then you must eat a good breakfast and go to your grandfather in the
library. Your grandfather is a very learned man, Dan, he reads Latin every
morning in the library.--Cupid, has Rhody a freshly broiled chicken for
your young master?"

She got up and rustled about the room, arranging the pink teaset behind the
glass doors of the corner press. Then she slipped her key basket over her
arm and fluttered in and out of the storeroom, stopping at intervals to
scold the stream of servants that poured in at the dining-room door. "Ef'n
you don' min', Ole Miss, Paisley, she done got de colick f'om a hull pa'cel
er green apples," and "Abram he's des a-shakin' wid a chill en he say he
cyarn go ter de co'n field."

"Wait a minute and be quiet," the old lady responded briskly, for, as the
boy soon learned, she prided herself upon he