The day before we went home Josiah went down into the city to do a few errents for the bretheren, Blandina had gone with Aspire Todd to visit a sister of hisen (they wuz engaged), and I had been to work gittin’ ready to leave the next mornin’, and Molly and I wuz goin’ in the afternoon to take a last look at the Fair, and she come into my room as I wuz gittin’ my bunnet on with her hands full of the most beautiful flowers she could get, and proposed that we should go and see Aunt Pheeny and cheer her up a little.

Sweet creeter, I hadn’t thought on’t.  The hospital wuz quite a distance off from where we had laid out to go, and I knowed I would be tired as a dog anyway.  But not wantin’ to be behind hand in good works I said I would go with her, and I selected some of the nicest of the fruit I had bought to take home to the grandchildren, and put in my silk bag for her, and put on my mantilly and told her I wuz ready.  And then that dear child proposed we should take Dorothy with us, knowin’ Aunt Trypheny would ruther see her than any Emperor or Zar, and I gin my consent to that, and we sot off, Dotie happy as a Queen at goin’ with us.

Well, Aunt Pheeny wuz glad enough to see us, specially Dorothy.  But we found her blissful in mind anyway for she told us the first thing her Prince Arthur had been there to see her and had been gone only a few minutes, and she showed us a couple of gold pieces he had gin her, big enough to bear witness to his goodness of heart as well as his wealth.  She said with her linement all aglow (she never liked her) that his mother had died two months ago leaving him a free man, he had stayed with her and devoted himself to her because he thought it wuz his duty, and since her death he had been on a long journey, it seemed, she said, as if he wuz hunting for something or other, though what she didn’t know.  And he had promised her that some time in the future she should come and live with him, and sez she, with her characterestic irreligion, “If I had my choice to live with him or in heaven I wouldn’t look at heaven.”  The idee!  We give her the fruit and flowers and asked her if she had everything for her comfort, and she said: 

“Yes, indeed! ’tain’t much here like the ironfirmary I wuz sent to in Chicago.  I wuz jest as white as you are, Miss Molly, when I went there, and them iggorent doctors jest turned my skin black as tar; I wuz so mortified when I come to my senses and found what they’d done and I wuz a nigger, I jest leaped out o’ bed and rushed right out into the street, I wuz so mortified.  But ’twuzn’t no use, I wuz a nigger, and so I’ve been ever since.”

And all the time she wuz tellin’ this, Dotie’s little white arms wuz ‘round her neck and she was pattin’ the black cheeks.  And as she finished she said lovingly, “Pheeny is nice!  Pheeny is pretty!  Pheeny has got white teef!” And indeed they did glisten like ivory in the blackness of her face as she held the baby clost to her heart with broad smiles.