“Where is Luclarion?” asked Hazel, standing still in the middle of the floor, in her astonishment.

“I don’t know.  I’m Damaris, and this one’s little Vash.  Don’t go for callin’ me Dam, now; the boys did that in my last place, an’ I left, don’ yer see?  I ain’t goin’ to be swore to, anyhow!”

And Damaris glittered at Hazel, with her shining teeth and her quick eyes, full of fun and good humor, and enjoyed her end of the joke extremely.

“Have you come to stay?” asked Hazel.

“‘Course.  I don’ mostly come for to go.”

“What does it mean, mother?” Hazel asked, hurrying up into her mother’s room.

And then Mrs. Ripwinkley explained.

“But what is she?  Black or white?  She’s got straight braids and curls at the back of her head, like everybody’s”—­

“‘Course,” said a voice in the doorway.  “An’ wool on top,—­place where wool ought to grow,—­same’s everybody, too.”

Damaris had come up, according to orders, to report a certain point in the progress of the fricassee.

“They all pulls the wool over they eyes, now-days, an sticks the straight on behind.  Where’s the difference?”

Mrs. Ripwinkley made some haste to rise and move toward the doorway, to go down stairs, turning Damaris from her position, and checking further remark.  Diana and Hazel stayed behind, and laughed.  “What fun!” they said.

It was the beginning of a funny fortnight; but it is not the fun I have paused to tell you of; something more came of it in the home-life of the Ripwinkleys; that which they were “waiting to see.”

Damaris wanted a place where she could take her little sister; she was tired of leaving her “shyin’ round,” she said.  And Vash, with her round, fuzzy head, her bright eyes, her little flashing teeth, and her polished mahogany skin,—­darting up and down the house “on Aarons,” or for mere play,—­dressed in her gay little scarlet flannel shirt-waist, and black and orange striped petticoat,—­was like some “splendid, queer little fire-bug,” Hazel said, and made a surprise and a picture wherever she came.  She was “cute,” too, as Damaris had declared beforehand; she was a little wonder at noticing and remembering, and for all sorts of handiness that a child of five could possibly be put to.

Hazel dressed rag babies for her, and made her a soap-box baby-house in the corner of the kitchen, and taught her her letters; and began to think that she should hate to have her go when Luclarion came back.

Damaris proved clever and teachable in the kitchen; and had, above all, the rare and admirable disposition to keep things scrupulously as she had found them; so that Luclarion, in her afternoon trips home, was comforted greatly to find that while she was “clearing and ploughing” at Mrs. Scarup’s, her own garden of neatness was not being turned into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is often done so astutely, that “when you do find a neat, capable, colored help, it’s as good help as you can have.”  Which you may notice is just as true without the third adjective as with.