“Like enough each to t’ other,” old Oth used to mutter; “on’y dem birds done forgot to eat, an’ Mars’ Gurney neber will, gorry knows dat!”

“If you could, Captain McKinstry,”—­it was the old man who spoke now, with a sort of whiffle through his teeth,—­“if you could?  A chip of shale next to this you brought this evening would satisfy me.  This is evidently an original fossil foot-mark:  no work of Indians.  I’ll go with you,”—­gathering his dressing-gown about his lank-legs.

“No,” said the Captain, some sudden thought bringing gravity and self-reliance into his face.  “My little girl is going with Uncle Dan.  It’s the last walk I can take with her.  Go, child, and bring your bonnet.”

Little Lizzy (people generally called her that) got up from the door-step where she sat, and ran up-stairs.  She was one of those women who look as if they ought to be ordered and taken care of.  Grey put a light shawl over her shoulders as she passed her.  Grey thought of Lizzy always very much as a piece of fine porcelain among some earthen crocks, she being a very rough crock herself.  Did not she have to make a companion in some Ways of old Oth?  When she had no potatoes for dinner, or could get no sewing to pay for Lizzy’s shoes, (Lizzy was hard on her shoes, poor thing!) she found herself talking it over with Oth.  The others did not-care for such things, and it would be mean to worry them, but Oth liked a misery, and it was such a relief to tell things sometimes!  The old negro had been a slave of her grandfather’s until he was of age; he was quite helpless now, having a disease of the spine.  But Grey had brought him to town with them, “because, you know, uncle, I couldn’t keep house without you, at all,—­I really couldn’t.”  So he had his chair covered with sheepskin in the sunniest corner always, and Grey made over her father’s old clothes for him on the machine.  Oth had learned to knit, and made “hisself s’ficiently independent, heelin’ an’ ribbin’ der boys’ socks, an’ keepin’ der young debbils in order,” he said.

It was but a cheap machine Grey had, but a sturdy little chap; the steel band of it, even the wheel, flashed back a jolly laugh at her as she passed it, slowly hushing Pen, as if it would like to say, “I’ll put you through, Sis!” and looked quite contemptuously at the heaps of white muslin piled up beside it.  The boys’ shirts, you know,—­but wasn’t it a mercy she had made enough to buy them before muslin went up?  There were three of the boys asleep now, legs and arms adrift over the floor, pockets gorged with half-apples, bits of twine instead of suspenders, other surreptitious bits under their trousers for straps.  There were the twins, girls of ten, hungering for beaux, pickles, and photographic albums.  They were gone to a party in the village.  “Sis” had done up their white dresses; and such fun as they had with her, putting them on to hide the darns!  She made it so comical that they laughed more than they did the whole evening.