to see ’em, an’ den when dey’s gone sayin’ sometimes, ’I wonder what sent ’em hyar to-day, when it’s so powerful hot, an’ I wants to take my sester’—­dat’s her nap, you know, after dinner, what plenty ladies take—­an’ den you mus’ sometimes speak sharp like to Jake an’ to me, an’ not be so soff spoken, as if we wasn’t yer niggers, ‘case we are, or I is, an’ does a heap o’ badness; an’ you orto pull my har f’or it.”

Confused and bewildered Eudora listened, first to Jake and then to Mandy Ann, but as she had no card case, no parasol, and no ladies called upon her, she could only try to remember the proper thing to do when the time came, if it ever did.  But she lost heart at last.  She was deserted.  There was no need for her to try to be a lady.  Her life was slipping away, but for baby there was hope, and many times in her chamber loft, when Mandy Ann thought she was taking her sester, and so far imitating “de quality,” she was praying that when she was dead, as she felt she soon would be, her little child might be recognized and taken where she rightfully belonged.

And so the years went on till more than three were gone since the stranger came on the “Hatty,” and one morning when she lay again at the wharf, and Mandy Ann came down for something ordered from Palatka, her eyes were swollen with crying, and when Ted began his chaff she answered, “Doan’t, Teddy, doan’t.  I can’t fought you now, nor sass you back, ‘case Miss Dory is dead, an’ Jake’s done gone for de minister.”

CHAPTER V

MISS DORY

That day was one of the hottest of the season, and the sun was beating down upon the piazza of the Brock House where the Rev. Charles Mason sat fanning himself with a huge palm leaf, and trying to put together in his mind some points for the sermon he was to preach the next Sunday in the parlor of the hotel to the few guests who came there occasionally during the summer.  But it was of no use.  With the thermometer at ninety degrees in the shade, and not a breath of air moving, except that made by his fan, points did not come readily, and all he could think of was Dives’ thirsting for a drop of water from the finger of Lazarus to cool his parched tongue.  “If it was hotter there than it is here I am sorry for him,” he thought, wiping his wet face and looking off across the broad lake in the direction of Sanford, from which a rowboat was coming very rapidly, the oarsman bending to his work with a will, which soon brought him to the landing place, near the hotel.  Securing his boat, he came up the walk and approaching Mr. Mason accosted him with, “How d’ye, Mas’r Mason.  I knows you by sight, and I’se right glad to find you hyar.  You see, I’se that tuckered out I’m fit to drap.”

The perspiration was standing in great drops on his face as he sank panting upon a step of the piazza.

“’Scuse me,” he said, “but ‘pears like I can’t stan’ another minit, what with bein’ up all night with Miss Dory, an’ gwine ’crost the lake twiste for nothin’, ’case I didn’t find him.”