aid. "I
b'lieved it the fust time he come befo' lil Miss Dory was bawn."

"Tell me about his coming," Eloise said, and Mandy Ann, who liked
nothing better than to talk, began at the beginning, and told every
particular of the first visit, when Miss Dora wore the white gown she
was married in and buried in, and the rose on her bosom. "And you think
this is it?" Eloise asked, holding carefully in a bit of paper the ashes
of what had once been a rose.

"I 'clar for't, yes," Mandy said, "I seen her put it somewhar with the
card he done gin me. You'se found it?"

Eloise nodded and held fast to the relics of a past which in this way
was linking itself to the present. "Tell us of the second time, when he
took mother," Eloise suggested, and here Mandy Ann was very eloquent,
describing everything in detail, repeating much which Jake had told,
telling of the ring,--a real stone, sent her from Savannah, and which
she had given her daughter as it was too small for her now. From a
drawer in the chamber above she brought a little white dress, stiff with
starch and yellow and tender with time, which she said "lil Miss Dory
wore when she first saw her father."

This Eloise seized at once, saying, "You will let me have it as
something which belonged to mother far back."

Mandy Ann looked doubtful. There would probably be grandchildren, and
Jake's scruples might be overcome and the white gown do duty again as a
christening robe. But Jake spoke up promptly.

"In course it's your'n, an' de book, too, if you wants it, though it's
like takin' a piece of de ole times. Strange Miss Dora don't pay no
'tention, but is so wropp'd up in dem twins. 'Specs it seems like when
de little darkys use' to play wid her," he continued, looking at Amy,
who, if she heard what Mandy Ann was saying, gave no sign, but seemed,
as Jake said, "wropp'd up" in the twins.

There was not much more for Mandy Ann to tell of the Colonel, except to
speak of the money he had sent to her and Jake, proving that he was not
"the wustest man in the world, if she did cuss him kneeling on Miss
Dory's grave the night after the burial." She spoke of that and of "ole
Miss Thomas, who was the last to _gin in_," and wouldn't have done it
then but for the ring on her finger. At this point Jake, who thought she
had told enough, said to her, "Hole on a spell. Your tongue is like a
mill wheel when it starts. Thar's some things you or'to keep to your
self. Ole man Crompton is dead,