ere did she come from?" the cook asked, while Jane
tried to soothe the excited child.

"Her name is Eudora Harris," the Colonel said. "Her father is a sneaking
scoundrel; her mother was a good woman, and my friend. She is dead, and
there is no one to care for her child but myself. I have brought her
home to bring up as my own. Jaky is the colored man who took care of her
with Mandy Ann, a colored girl. She will cry for her by and by."

As if to prove his words true the child set up a howl for Mandy Ann; "me
wants Mandy Ann," while the Colonel continued, "She is to be treated in
all respects as a daughter of the house. Get her some decent clothes at
once, you women who understand such things. Don't mind expense. Give her
a pretty room, and I think you'd better hunt up some young person to
look after her. Until the girl comes Jane must sleep in the room with
her, and don't bother me unless it is necessary; I feel quite used up,
and as if I had been through a thrashing-machine. I am not used to
children, and this one is--well, to say the least, very extraordinary."

This was a good deal for the Colonel to say at one time to his servants,
who listened in wonder, none of them knowing anything except Peter, who
kept his knowledge to himself. And this was all the explanation the
Colonel gave, either to his servants, or to the people outside who knew
better than to question him, and who never mentioned the child in his
presence. Gossip, however, was rife in the neighborhood, and many were
the surmises as to the parentage of the little girl who for a time
turned the Crompton House upside down, and made it a kind of bedlam when
her fits were on, and she was rolling on the floor, and bumping her
head, with cries for Shaky and Mandy Ann. She was homesick, and cared
nothing for the beautiful things they brought her. Against the pretty
dresses she fought at first, and then submitted to them, but kept her
old one in a corner of her room, and Susie, the girl hired to attend
her, sometimes found her there asleep with her head upon it, and Judy
held closely in her arms. They bought her a doll-house which was fitted
up with everything calculated to please a child, but after inspecting it
a while she turned from it with a cry for her "shady" under the palm
tree in the clearing. The doll, Mandy Ann, which the Colonel had bought
in Savannah, never took the place of Judy, who was her favorite,
together with the scarlet cloak, which she would