“They send dreadful poor samples down this way, then,” muttered Phillis, significantly.  “And, some as pertends to be somebody is nobody, or wuss, ef the truth was known.  Don’t talk to me ’bout ’em, Miss Mabel, darling!  ’Twas a mighty black day for us when one on ’em fust laid eyes upon Mars’ Winston.  You’ve hearn, ain’t you, that my house is to be tore down, and I’m to go into the quarters ’long with the field hands and sich like common trash?  So long as our skins is all the same color, some folks can’t see no difference in us.”

“I had not heard it.  I am sorry.”

Mabel spoke earnestly, for “Mammy’s house,” a neat frame cottage a story-and-a-half high, embowered in locust-trees, and with a thrifty, although aged garden—­honeysuckle clambering all over the front, was to her one of the dearest pictures of her early days.  She could see herself, now—­the motherless babe whom Aunt Rachel and Mammy had never let feel her orphanage—­sitting on the door-step, bedecking her doll with the odorous pink-and-white blossoms in summer time, and in autumn with the light-red berries.

“Why is that done?” she asked.

“I spiles the prospect, honey!” fiercely—­ironical.  “Northern folks has tender eyes, and I hurts ’em—­me and my poor little house what ole marster built for me when Mars’ Winston was a baby, and your blessed ma couldn’t be easy ’thout I was near her—­we spiles the prospect!  So, it must be knocked down and carted away for rubbish to build pig-pens, I ’spose, and me sent off to live ’mong low-lived niggers, sech as I’ve always held myself above.  She ain’t never put it into Mars’ Winston’s head to cut down the trees that shets off the “prospect” of the colored people’s burying-ground from her winder.  There’s some things she’d as lief not see.  I oughtn’t to mind this so much, I know, for I ain’t got long for to stay here nohow, but I did hope to die in my nest!” sobbing behind her apron.

“I am very sorry—­more grieved than you can think!” repeated Mabel.  “If I could help you in any way, I would.  But I cannot!”

“Bless your heart!  Don’t I know that, dear!  Here, you ain’t got no more power nor me.  But I was a-thinkin’ that maybe you wouldn’t think me too old for a nuss when you come to want one, and could manage to take me with you when you went home.  I’se a heap of wear in me yit, and there ain’t nothing ’bout babies I don’t understand.”

Mabel colored painfully.

“If I had my way”—­she began—­then altered her plan of reply.  “I could not enter into such an arrangement without consulting Mr. Dorrance, Mammy, and I am afraid he would not think as favorably of it as you and I do.  He has been brought up with different ideas, you see.”

“Um-hum!”

An interjection capable of as many and as varied meanings in the mouth of a colored woman of her stamp as was little Jean Baptiste’s “altro!” It signified now—­“I comprehend a great deal more than you want me to perceive—­you poor, downtrodden angel!”