the simplest of arithmetical sums.  By some subtle law of the influence of the energetic she assumed at once the rights of authority.  From the master of the house to the field hands in the “quarters,” all bent to her regenerating rule.  She opened the windows in the airy rooms, cleaned off the storeroom shelves with soda and water, and put the marauding small negroes to weeding the lawn.  Before her passionate purification the place was purged of the dust of years.  The hardwood floors of the wide old halls began to shine like mirrors, the assortment of odds and ends in the attic was relegated to an outhouse, and even the general’s aunt, Miss Griselda Grigsby, was turned unceremoniously out of her apartment before the all-pervading soap-suds of cleaning day.

As for the servants, a sudden miraculous zeal possessed them.  Within a fortnight the garden rows were hoed free from grass, the hops were gathered from the fence, and the weeds on the lawn vanished beneath small black fingers.  Even the annual threshing of the harvest was accomplished under the overseeing eye of “Miss Chris,” as she was called by the coloured population.  During the week that the old machine poured out its chaffless wheat and the driver whistled in the centre of the treadmill Miss Chris appeared at the barn at noon each day to warn the hands against waste of time and to see that the mules were well watered.

But the revolutions without were as naught to the internal ones.  Aunt Verbeny, the cook, whose tyranny had extended over thirty years, was assisted from her pedestal, and the hen-house keys were removed from the nail of the kitchen wall.

“This will never do, Verbeny,” said Miss Chris a month after her arrival.  “We could not possibly have eaten three dozen chickens within the last week.  I am afraid you take them home without asking me.”

Aunt Verbeny, a fat old woman with a shining black skin, smoothed her checked apron with offended dignity.

“Hi!  Miss Chris, ain’t I de cook?” she exclaimed.

But Miss Chris preserved her ground.

“That is no excuse for you taking what doesn’t belong to you,” she replied severely.  “If this keeps up I shall be obliged to let Delphy do the cooking.  There won’t be a chicken in the hen-house by the end of the month.”

Aunt Verbeny still smoothed her apron, but her authority was shaken, and she felt it.  She gave a slow grunt of dissatisfaction.

“Dese ain’t de doin’s I’se used ter,” she protested, and then, beneath the undaunted eyes of Miss Chris, she melted into propitiation.

“Des’ let dat ar chicken alont, Miss Chris,” she said, skilfully reducing the charge to a single offence.  “Des’ let dat ar chicken alont.  ‘Tain’ no use yo’ rilin’ yo’se’f ’bout dat.  Hit’s done en it’s been done.  Hit don’t becomst de quality ter fluster demse’ves over de gwines on uv er low-lifeted fowl.  You des’ bresh yo’se’f down an steddy like hit ain’ been fool you ef you knowed yo’se’f.  You des’ let dat ar chicken be er little act uv erdultery betweenst you en me.  Ef’n it’s gone, hit’ll stay gone!”