“What is the matter, William?” she coldly asked.

“I ain’t never slep’ by myself,” he sobbed.  “Wilkes Booth Lincoln always sleep on a pallet by my bed ever sence we’s born an’—­’I wants Aunt Cindy to tell me ’bout Uncle Piljerk Peter.”

His aunt sat down on the bed by his side.  She was not versed in the ways of childhood and could not know that the little boy wanted to pillow his head on Aunt Cindy’s soft and ample bosom, that he was homesick for his black friends, the only companions he had ever known.

“I’ll you a Bible story,” she temporized.  “You must not be a baby.  You are not afraid, are you, William?  God is always with you.”

“I don’ want no God,” he sullenly made reply, “I wants somebody with sho’ ‘nough skin an’ bones, an’—­n’ I wants to hear ’bout Uncle Piljerk Peter.”

“I will tell you a Bible story,” again suggested his aunt, “I will tell you about—­”

“I don’ want to hear no Bible story, neither,” he objected, “I wants to hear Uncle Jimmy-Jawed Jup’ter play his ‘corjun an’ sing: 

  “’Rabbit up the gum tree, Coon is in the holler
  Wake, snake; Juney-Bug stole a half a dollar."’

“I’ll sing you a hymn,” said Miss Minerva patiently.

“I don’ want to hear you sing no hymn,” said Billy impolitely.  “I wants to see Sanctified Sophy shout.”

As his aunt could think of no substitute with which to tempt him in lieu of Sanctified Sophy’s shouting, she remained silent.

“An’ I wants Wilkes Booth Lincoln to dance a clog,” persisted her nephew.

Miss Minerva still remained silent.  She felt unable to cope with the situation till she had adjusted her thoughts and made her plans.

Presently Billy, looking at her shrewdly, said: 

“Gimme my rabbit foot, Aunt Minerva, an’ I’ll go right off to sleep.”

When she again looked in on him he was fast asleep, a rosy flush on his babyish, tearstained cheek, his red lips half parted, his curly head pillowed on his arm, and close against his soft, young throat there nestled the left hind foot of a rabbit.

Miss Minerva’s bed time was half after nine o’clock, summer or winter.  She had hardly varied a second in the years that had elapsed since the runaway marriage of her only relative, the young sister whose child had now come to live with her.  But on the night of Billy’s arrival the stern, narrow woman sat for hours in her rocking chair, her mind busy with thoughts of that pretty young sister, dead since the boy’s birth.

And now the wild, reckless, dissipated brother-in-law was dead, too, and the child had been sent to her; to the aunt who did not want him, who did not care for children, who had never forgiven her sister her unfortunate marriage.  “If he had only been a girl,” she sighed.  What she believed to be a happy thought entered her brain.

“I shall rear him,” she promised herself, “just as if he were a little girl; then he will be both a pleasure and a comfort to me, and a companion for my loneliness.”