“If his miserable hens come over here, I shall most certainly—­”

“Keep the eggs.  We’ll tell him so when he comes again.”

“Comes again?  What, and my name Sophronisba?”

“My own grandmother had the second sight; and I don’t need spectacles,” said Alicia.  “Sophy, that man has come into our lives to stay.  I feel it in my bones!  It’s not an unpleasant feeling,” she finished gracelessly.

When Unc’ Adam presently put in his appearance, he was profoundly impressed and respectful:  we were brisk, unhaunted, and unafraid, after a night in Hynds House!  The three colored women who had come with him, induced by cupidity and curiosity to enter ol’ Mis’ Scarlett’s ill-omened domain, at first hung back.  They were plainly prepared to bolt at the first unusual noise.

Of the three, one—­by name Mary Magdalen—­proved to be a heaven-born, predestinated cook; and her we persuaded, by bribery, cajolery, and subornation of scruples, to remain with us permanently.  Only, she flatly refused to stay on the place overnight.  Darkness shouldn’t catch Mary Magdalen under the Scarlett Witch’s roof-tree.

There are certain gifted beings who possess the secret of bringing order out of chaos; for them the total depravity of inanimate objects has no terrors; inanimate objects become docile to their will.  Such a one was Mary Magdalen.  In two days she had transformed a sooty cavern into a clean and orderly kitchen.  For she was a singing and a scourful woman, and her Sign was the speretual and the scrubbing-brush.  It is true that she put a precious old Spode tea-pot on the stove and boiled the tea in it; that she hung her wig and the dish-towel on the same nail; and that she immediately asked for a white stocking foot to use as a coffee-bag.

“But don’t you-all go bust no new pai’h,” she advised economically.  “Ah ‘d rathah make mah coffee in a ol’ white stockin’ foot any day, jes’ so you ain’t done wo’ out de toes too much.”

“Sophy,” said the horror-struck Alicia, “that woman must be watched until we can buy a percolater.  Suppose she’s got ‘a ol’ white stockin’ foot’ of her own!”

Despite which there never was, never will be, such another cook as Mary Magdalen.  It is true she wasn’t amenable to discipline, and reason wasn’t her guiding-lamp.  And nothing—­not bribes, threats, entreaties, prayers, orders, commands, moral suasion—­could break her of doing just what she wanted to do just when and how she wanted to do it.  You’d be entertaining your dearest enemies, serene in the consciousness that your house was a credit to your good management; and behold, Mary Magdalen in the drawing-room door, with her wig askew and her hands rolled in her apron: 

“Oh, Miss Sophy!”

“Well?” say you, resignedly, with a feigned smile; “what is it, Mary Magdalen?”

“Miss Sophy, you know we-all’s sugah?”

“Yes.”

“Wellum, Miss Sophy, ’t ain’t any.”