“There, I told you so,” said she, quickly returning.  “She says you carry them straight back and let the room alone.”

Anna began to cry, saying “the vases were hers, and she should think she might do what she pleased with them.”

“What did you go and blab for, you great for shame, you?” exclaimed John Jr., suddenly appearing in the doorway, at the same time giving Carrie a push, which set her to crying, and brought Mrs. Livingstone to the scene of action,

“Can’t my vases stay in here?  Nobody’ll hurt ’em, and they’ll look so pretty,” said Anna.

“Can’t that hateful John behave, and let me alone?” said Carrie.

“And can’t Carrie quit sticking her nose in other folks’ business?” chimed in John Jr.

“Oh Lordy, what a fuss,” said Corinda, while poor Mrs. Livingstone, half distracted, took refuge under one of her dreadful headaches, and telling her children “to fight their own battles and let her alone,” returned to her room.

“A body’d s’pose marster’s kin warn’t of no kind of count,” said Aunt Milly, the head cook, to a group of sables, who, in the kitchen, were discussing the furniture of the “trump’ry room,” as they were in the habit of calling the chamber set apart for Mrs. Nichols.  “Yes, they would s’pose they warn’t of no kind o’ count, the way miss goes on, ravin’ and tarin’ and puttin’ ’em off with low-lived truck that we black folks wouldn’t begin to tache with the tongs.  Massy knows ef my ole mother warn’t dead and gone to kingdom come, I should never think o’ sarvin’ her so, and I don’t set myself up to be nothin’ but an old nigger, and a black one at that.  But Lor’ that’s the way with more’n half the white folks.  They jine the church, and then they think they done got a title deed to one of them houses up in heaven (that nobody ever built) sure enough.  Goin’ straight thar, as fast as a span of race-horses can carry ’em.  Ki!  Won’t they be disappointed, some on ’em, and Miss Matilda ’long the rest, when she drives up, hosses all a reekin’ sweat, and spects to walk straight into the best room, but is told to go to the kitchen and turn hoe-cakes for us niggers, who are eatin’ at the fust table, with silver forks and napkins——?”

Here old Milly stopped to breathe, and her daughter Vine, who had listened breathlessly to her mother’s description of the “good time coming,” asked “when these things come to pass, if Miss Carrie wouldn’t have to swing the feathers over the table to keep off the flies, instead of herself?”

“Yes, that she will, child,” returned her mother; “Things is all gwine to be changed in the wink of your eye.  Miss Anna read that very tex’ to me last Sunday and I knew in a minit what it meant.  Now thar’s Miss Anna, blessed lamb.  She’s one of ’em that’ll wear her white gowns and stay in t’other room, with her face shinin’ like an ile lamp!”

While this interesting conversation was going on in the kitchen, John Jr., in the parlor was teasing his mother for money, with which to go up to Lexington the next day.  “You may just as well give it to me without any fuss,” said he, “for if you don’t, I’ll get my bills at the Phoenix charged.  The old man is good, and they’ll trust.  But then a feller feels more independent when he can pay down, and treat a friend, if he likes; so hand over four or five Vs.”