with
the money I paid for the new cottage and its cheap chairs."

"Gone, hit ain' gone, fu' ef you won't let on to have it, I will. I'll
show dat new man how yo' pa would 'a' did ef he'd 'a' been hyeah."

"What, you, Mammy Peggy?"

"Yes, me, I ain' a-gwine to let him t'ink dat de Ha'isons didn' have
no quality."

"Good, mammy, you make me remember who I am, and what my duty is. I
shall see Mr. Northcope when he comes, and I'll try to make my
Harrison pride sustain me when I give up to him everything I have
held dear. Oh, mammy, mammy!"

"Heish, chile, sh, sh, er go on, dat's right, yo' eyes is open now an'
you kin cry a little weenty bit. It'll do you good. But when dat new
man comes I want mammy's lamb to look at him an' hol' huh haid lak'
huh ma used to hol' hern, an' I reckon Mistah No'thcope gwine to
withah away."

And so it happened that when Bartley Northcope came the next day to
take possession of the old Virginia mansion he was welcomed at the
door, and ushered into the broad parlor by Mammy Peggy, stiff and
unbending in the faded finery of her family's better days.

"Miss Mime'll be down in a minute," she told him, and as he sat in the
great old room, and looked about him at the evidences of ancient
affluence, his spirit was subdued by the silent tragedy which his
possession of it evinced. But he could not but feel a thrill at the
bit of comedy which is on the edge of every tragedy, as he thought of
Mammy Peggy and her formal reception. "She let me into my own house,"
he thought to himself, "with the air of granting me a favor." And then
there was a step on the stair; the door opened, and Miss Mima stood
before him, proud, cold, white, and beautiful.

He found his feet, and went forward to meet her. "Mr. Northcope," she
said, and offered her hand daintily, hesitatingly. He took it, and
thought, even in that flash of a second, what a soft, tiny hand it
was.

"Yes," he said, "and I have been sitting here, overcome by the
vastness of your fine old house."

The "your" was delicate, she thought, but she only said, "Let me help
you to recovery with some tea. Mammy will bring some," and then she
blushed very red. "My old nurse is the only servant I have with me,
and she is always mammy to me." She remembered, and throwing up her
proud little head rang for the old woman.

Directly, Mammy Peggy came marching in like a grenadier. She bore a
tray with the tea things on it, and after she had set it down hove