Here she began to chuckle comfortably, and presently she said: 

“Well, you know, she’s a nuisance herself, Miss Cathy is, she is so busy, and into everything, like that bird.  It’s all just as innocent, you know, and she don’t mean any harm, and is so good and dear; and it ain’t her fault, it’s her nature; her interest is always a-working and always red-hot, and she can’t keep quiet.  Well, yesterday it was ‘Please, Miss Cathy, don’t do that’; and, ‘Please, Miss Cathy, let that alone’; and, ’Please, Miss Cathy, don’t make so much noise’; and so on and so on, till I reckon I had found fault fourteen times in fifteen minutes; then she looked up at me with her big brown eyes that can plead so, and said in that odd little foreign way that goes to your heart,

“’Please, mammy, make me a compliment.”

“And of course you did it, you old fool?”

“Marse Tom, I just grabbed her up to my breast and says, ’Oh, you po’ dear little motherless thing, you ain’t got a fault in the world, and you can do anything you want to, and tear the house down, and yo’ old black mammy won’t say a word!’”

“Why, of course, of course—­I knew you’d spoil the child.”

She brushed away her tears, and said with dignity: 

“Spoil the child? spoil that child, Marse Tom?  There can’t anybody spoil her.  She’s the king bee of this post, and everybody pets her and is her slave, and yet, as you know, your own self, she ain’t the least little bit spoiled.”  Then she eased her mind with this retort:  “Marse Tom, she makes you do anything she wants to, and you can’t deny it; so if she could be spoilt, she’d been spoilt long ago, because you are the very worst!  Look at that pile of cats in your chair, and you sitting on a candle-box, just as patient; it’s because they’re her cats.”

If Dorcas were a soldier, I could punish her for such large frankness as that.  I changed the subject, and made her resume her illustrations.  She had scored against me fairly, and I wasn’t going to cheapen her victory by disputing it.  She proceeded to offer this incident in evidence on her twin theory: 

“Two weeks ago when she got her finger mashed open, she turned pretty pale with the pain, but she never said a word.  I took her in my lap, and the surgeon sponged off the blood and took a needle and thread and began to sew it up; it had to have a lot of stitches, and each one made her scrunch a little, but she never let go a sound.  At last the surgeon was so full of admiration that he said, ‘Well, you are a brave little thing!’ and she said, just as ca’m and simple as if she was talking about the weather, ’There isn’t anybody braver but the Cid!’ You see? it was the boy-twin that the surgeon was a-dealing with.

“Who is the Cid?”

“I don’t know, sir—­at least only what she says.  She’s always talking about him, and says he was the bravest hero Spain ever had, or any other country.  They have it up and down, the children do, she standing up for the Cid, and they working George Washington for all he is worth.”