“Tell me about Angy, Ernie,” I entreated.  “O Heaven! to think her hands have touched these flowers—­her sweet face bent above him!  Darling, darling! to be divided and yet so near!  It breaks my heart!” and tears flowed freely while he tried to describe the vision that had so impressed him, in his earnest way.

“Poor Angy got no wings,” he began again; “bu hair, and bu eyes, and bu dress”—­every thing he admired was blue—­“and she kissed Ernie and gave him peppermint-drops.  Then Adam and Eve laughed just so”—­grinning wonderfully—­“and said, ‘Go home, bad, ugly child, with a back on!’ Then Angy pulled flowers and gave Ernie!”

“It is only the little gal next door—­I means de young lady ob de ’stablishment, wat de poor, foolish, humped-shouldered baby talking about,” Dinah explained.  “He calls her ‘Angy,’ I s’pose, ’cause she’s so purty like; and you tells him ’bout dem hebbenly kine of people, so de say, mos’ ebbery night.  Does you think dar is such tings, sure enough, Mirry?”

“Certainly, Dinah—­the Bible tells us so; but what is the name of the pretty little girl of whom you speak?  Tell me, if you know”—­and I laid my hand upon her arm and whispered this inquiry, waiting impatiently for a confirmation of my almost certainty.  For, that my darling was Ernie’s Angy, I could not doubt, and the thought moved me to tremulous emotion.

“Dar, now:  you is going to hab one ob dem bad turns agin—­I sees it in your eyes.  You see,” dropping her voice for a moment, “I darsn’t dar to speak out plain and ’bove-board heah, as if I was at home in Georgy!  Ebbery ting is wat dey calls a mist’ry’ hereabouts; an’ I has bin notified not to tell ob no secret doins ob deirn to any airthly creeter, onless I wants to be smacked into jail an’ guv up to my wrong owners.  My own folks went down on de ‘Scewsko;’ an’ I means to wait till I see how dat ’state’s gwine to be settled up afore I pursents myself as ’mong de live ones.  We is all published as dead, you sees, honey, an’ it would be no lie to preach, our funeral, or eben put up our foot-board.  He—­he—­he!  I wonder wat my ole man’ll say ef he ebber sees me comin’ back agin wid a bag full ob money?  I guess it’ll skeer de ole creeter out ob a year’s growfe; but dis is de trufe!  Ef Miss Polly Allen gits de ‘state (she was my mistis’s born full-sister, an’ a mity fine ole maid, I tells you, chile!), wy, den Sabra’ll be found to be no ghose; fur it’s easier to lib wid good wite folks Souf dan Norf.  We hab our own housen dar, an’ pigs, an’ poultry, an’ taturs, an’ a heap besides, an’ time to come an’ go, an’ doctors wen we’s sick, an’ our own preachin’, an’ de banjo an’ bones to dance by, an’ de best ob funeral ‘casions an’ weddin’s bofe, an’ no cole wedder, an’ nuffin to do but set by de light wood-fiah an’ smoke a pipe wen we gits past work; an’ we chooses our own time to lay by—­some sooner, some later, ‘cordin’ as de jints holes out.  But here it is work—­work—­work—­all de time; good pay, but no holiday, no yams, no possum-meat, an’ mity mean colored siety!”