Grey had saved some money to buy them ribbon for sashes, but Joseph had taken it from her work-basket that morning to buy cigars.  One of the girls had cried, and even Grey’s lips grew scarlet; her Welsh blood maddened.  This woman was neither an angel nor an idiot, Paul Blecker.  Then—­it was such a trifle!  Poor Joseph! he had been her mother’s favorite, was spoiled a little.  So she hurried to his chamber-door with his shaving-water, calling, “Brother!” Grey had a low, always pleasant voice, I remember; you looked in her eyes, when you heard it, to see her laughing.  The ex-Congressman was friendly, but dignified, when he took the water.  Grey presumed on her usefulness; women seldom did know their place.

There was yet another girl busy now, convoying the lubberly hulks of boys to bed,—­a solid, Dutch-built little clipper, Loo by name.  Loo looked upon Grey secretly as rather silly; (she did all the counting for her; Grey hardly knew the multiplication-table;) she always, however, kept her opinions to herself.  Tugging the boys after her in the manner of a tow-boat, she thumped past her father and “that gype, McKinstry, colloging over their bits of rock,” indignation in every twist of her square shoulders.

“Fresh air,” she said to Grey, jerking her head emphatically toward the open door.

“I will, Looey.”

“Looey!  Pish!”

It was no admiring glance she bestowed on the slight figure that came down the stairs, and stood timidly waiting for McKinstry.

“You’re going, Captain?” the old man’s nose and mind starting suddenly up from his folio.  “Lizzy,—­eh?  Here’s the bit of rock.  In the coal formation, you say?  Impossible, then, to be as old as the batrachian track that”—­

A sudden howl brought him back to the present era.  Loo was arguing her charge up to bed by a syllogism applied at the right time in the right place.  The old man held his hands to his ears with a patient smile, until McKinstry was out of hearing.

“It is hard to devote the mind pure to a search for truth here, my daughter,” looking over Grey’s head as usual, with pensive, benevolent eyes.  “But I do what I can,—­I do what I can.”

“I know, father,”—­stroking his hair as she might a child’s, trimming the lamp, and bringing his slippers while he held out his feet for her to put them on,—­“I know.”

Then, when he took up the pen, she went out into the cool night.

“I do what I can,” said he, earnestly, looking at the catalogue, with his head to one side.

It was Oth’s time,—­now or never.

“Debbil de bit yer do!  Ef yer did what yer could, Mars’ Si, dar ’ud be more ‘n one side o’ sparerib in de cellar fur ten hungry mouths.  We’ve gone done eat dat pig o’ Miss Grey’s from head ter tail.  An’ pigs in June’s a disgrace ter Christians, let alone Presbyterians like us uns.”

The old man glanced at him.  Oth’s spine gave his tongue free license.