“Then you shall see the new baby in the bigger Guest Room, and the crippled Polish child in the small one,” said my mother.  “The baby’s name is Smelka Zurawawski, but she’s all the better for it—­I never saw a nicer baby.  And the little boy is so patient and so intelligent, and so pretty!  Dr. Westmoreland thinks he can be cured, and we hope to be able to send him on to Johns Hopkins, after we’ve got him in good shape.  Where is your luggage?  How long may we keep you?  But first of all you shall have tea and some of Clelie’s cakes.  Clelie has grown horribly vain of her cakes.  She expects to make them in heaven some of these days, for the most exclusive of the cherubim and seraphim, and the lordliest of the principalities and powers.”

Mary Virginia smiled at the pleased old servant.  “I’ve half a dozen gorgeous Madras head-handkerchiefs for you, Clelie, and a perfect duck of a black frock which you are positively to make up and wear now—­you are not to save it up to be buried in!”

“No’m, Miss Mary Virginia.  I won’t get buried in it.  I’ll maybe get married in it,” said Clelie calmly.

“Married!  Clelie!” said my mother, in consternation.  “Do you mean to tell me you’re planning to leave me, at this time of our lives?”

Clelie was indignant.  “You think I have no mo’sense than to leave you and M’sieu Armand, for some strange nigger?  Not me!”

“Who are you going to marry, Clelie?” Mary Virginia was delighted.  “And hadn’t you better let me give you another frock?  Black is hardly appropriate for a bride.”

“I’m not exactly set in my mind who he’s going to be yet, Miss Mary Virginia, but he’s got to be somebody or other.  There’s been lots after me, since it got out I’m such a grand cook and save my wages.  But I’ve got a sort of taste for Daddy January.  He’s old, but he’s lively.  He’s a real ambitious old man like that.  Besides, I’m sure of his family,—­I always did like Judge Mayne and Mister Laurence, and I do like ’ristocratic connections, Miss Mary Virginia.  That big nigger that drives one of the mill trucks had the impudence to tell me he’d give me a church wedding and pay for it himself, but I told him I was raised a Catholic; and what you think he said?  He said, ’Oh, well, you’ve been christened in the face already.  We can dip the rest of you easy enough, and then you’ll be a real Christian, like me!’ I’d just scalded my chickens and was picking them, and I was that mad I upped and let him have that dish pan full of hot water and wet feathers in his face.  ‘There,’ says I, ’you’re christened in the face now yourself,’ I says.  ‘You can go and dip the rest of yourself,’ says I, ‘but see you do it somewhere else besides my kitchen,’ I says.  I don’t think he’s crazy to marry me any more, and Daddy January’s sort of soothing to my feelings, besides being close to hand.  Yes’m, I guess you’d better give me the black dress, Miss Mary Virginia, if you don’t mind:  it’d come in awful handy if I had to go in mourning.”