The nurse came in shortly afterwards, a neat-looking brown girl, dressed in a clean calico gown, with a nurse’s cap and apron.

“Look a-here, gal,” said Mammy Jane sternly, “I wants you ter understan’ dat you got ter take good keer er dis chile; fer I nussed his mammy dere, an’ his gran’mammy befo’ ‘im, an’ you is got a priv’lege dat mos’ lackly you don’ ’preciate.  I wants you to ‘member, in yo’ incomin’s an’ outgoin’s, dat I got my eye on you, an’ am gwine ter see dat you does yo’ wo’k right.”

“Do you need me for anything, ma’am?” asked the young nurse, who had stood before Mrs. Carteret, giving Mammy Jane a mere passing glance, and listening impassively to her harangue.  The nurse belonged to the younger generation of colored people.  She had graduated from the mission school, and had received some instruction in Dr. Miller’s class for nurses.  Standing, like most young people of her race, on the border line between two irreconcilable states of life, she had neither the picturesqueness of the slave, nor the unconscious dignity of those of whom freedom has been the immemorial birthright; she was in what might be called the chip-on-the-shoulder stage, through which races as well as individuals must pass in climbing the ladder of life,—­not an interesting, at least not an agreeable stage, but an inevitable one, and for that reason entitled to a paragraph in a story of Southern life, which, with its as yet imperfect blending of old with new, of race with race, of slavery with freedom, is like no other life under the sun.

Had this old woman, who had no authority over her, been a little more polite, or a little less offensive, the nurse might have returned her a pleasant answer.  These old-time negroes, she said to herself, made her sick with their slavering over the white folks, who, she supposed, favored them and made much of them because they had once belonged to them,—­much the same reason why they fondled their cats and dogs.  For her own part, they gave her nothing but her wages, and small wages at that, and she owed them nothing more than equivalent service.  It was purely a matter of business; she sold her time for their money.  There was no question of love between them.

Receiving a negative answer from Mrs. Carteret, she left the room without a word, ignoring Mammy Jane completely, and leaving that venerable relic of ante-bellum times gasping in helpless astonishment.

“Well, I nevuh!” she ejaculated, as soon as she could get her breath, “ef dat ain’ de beatinis’ pe’fo’mance I ever seed er heared of!  Dese yer young niggers ain’ got de manners dey wuz bawned wid!  I don’ know w’at dey’re comin’ to, w’en dey ain’ got no mo’ rispec’ fer ole age—­I don’ know—­I don’ know!”

“Now what are you croaking about, Jane?” asked Major Carteret, who came into the room and took the child into his arms.

Mammy Jane hobbled to her feet and bobbed a curtsy.  She was never lacking in respect to white people of proper quality; but Major Carteret, the quintessence of aristocracy, called out all her reserves of deference.  The major was always kind and considerate to these old family retainers, brought up in the feudal atmosphere now so rapidly passing away.  Mammy Jane loved Mrs. Carteret; toward the major she entertained a feeling bordering upon awe.