“I don’t know much about driving,” confessed Miss Dorcas.  “That is, I’ve been driving a great deal but I’ve never held the lines.—­Whoa! get up, sir!” She gave a gurgly cluck, and flapped the lines up and down on Firefly’s back, with her elbows high in air.  Firefly started meekly off on a jog trot.  Mr. Collins looked after them.

“Dumb brutes is got heap more sense than humans,” he exclaimed.  “They understands women.  Now, Miss Dorcas she’s whoain’ and geein’ and hawin’ that horse at the same time, but somehow he knows what she wants him to do and he’s gwine to do it.”

Firefly followed the winding of the river-road mile after mile, along meadows, fields, and wooded hills, fair in the hazy sunlight.  How many times Anne had travelled this road on visits to the numerous cousins!

Firefly turned at last from the highway to a plantation road and stopped at a log cabin.  It was a neat, whitewashed little house, with rows of zinnias and marigolds on each side of a walk leading from the road.  Over the door, hung a madeira vine covered with little spikes of fragrant white blossoms.  Charity, in a blue-and-white checked cotton gown, with a bandanna around her head, was working in her garden beside the house.

“Don’t speak to her, Cousin Dorcas,” whispered Anne.  “Let me s’prise her.”  She jumped lightly out of the buggy and ran to Aunt Charity.  “Boo!” she said.

Charity dropped her hoe with a scream.  “Lawd ‘a’ mercy!” she exclaimed, backing toward the cabin.  “My child’s ghost in de broad daylight!”

Anne laughed till tears ran down her cheeks.  “There!” she said, pinching Charity’s fat arm.  “Does that feel like a ghost, Aunt Charity?”

Charity seized Anne in her arms and jumped up and down, exclaiming, “My child in de flesh and blood! my child in de flesh and blood!” At last she recovered herself enough to “mind her manners” and help Miss Dorcas out of the buggy.

“You all ain’ gwine away a step till you eat a snack,” she insisted.  “I got a chicken in dyar I done kilt to take to church to-morrow.  Ain’t I glad it’s ready for my baby child!  And I’ll mix some hoecakes and bake some sweet taters and gi’ you a pitcher o’ cool sweet milk.  My precious baby, you set right dyar in de do’.  I can’t take my eyes off you any more’n if dee was glued to you.”

A table was set under the great oak and Charity, beaming with joy, waited on her guests.  “Richard ain’t gwi’ forgive hisself for goin’ to mill to-day,” she said.  “Dunno huccome he went, anyway.  He could ‘a’ put it off till Monday.  But if you gwi’ be at de old place till Chewsday, me an’ him will sho hobble up to see you.”

As the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, Miss Dorcas and Anne started on their homeward journey.  Miss Dorcas clucked and jerked the lines, and Firefly ambled homeward, now jog-trotting along the road, now pausing to nibble grass on the wayside.

CHAPTER XXIV