Eudora was racing now through the briers, and weeds, and palmetto stumps, and dragging Mandy Ann with her.

“Never mind granny,” she said, when they reached the house and Mandy stopped to say how d’ye to the old woman in the chair.  “Come upstairs with me and help me change my gown.”

“Faw de Lawd’s sake, is he yer beau?” Mandy Ann asked, as she saw the excitement of her mistress, who was tearing around the room, now laughing, now dashing the tears away and giving the most contradicting orders as to what she was to wear and Mandy Ann was to get for her.

They heard the two knocks and knew that some one had entered the house, but Mandy Ann was too busy blacking a pair of boots to go at once, as she had her hands to wash, and yet, although it seemed to him an age, it was scarcely two minutes before she came down the stairs, nimble as a cat, and bobbed before him with a courtesy nearly to the floor.  Her mistress had said to her.  “Mind your manners.  You say you have learned a heap in Jacksonville.”

“To be shoo’.  I’ve seen de quality thar in Miss Perkins’s house,” Mandy Ann replied, and hence the courtesy she thought rather fetching, although she shook a little as she confronted the stranger, whose features never relaxed in the least, and who did not answer her.  “How d’ye, Mas’r,” which she felt it incumbent to say, as there was no one else to receive him.

Mandy Ann was very bright, and as she knew no restraint in her Florida home, when alone with her old Miss and young Miss, she was apt to be rather familiar for a negro slave, and a little inclined to humor.  She knew whom the gentleman had come to see, but when he said.  “Is your mistress at home?” she turned at once to the piece of parchment in the rocking-chair and replied.  “To be shoo.  Dar she is in de char over dar.  Dat’s ole Miss Lucy.”

Going up to the chair, she screamed in the woman’s ear, “Wake up, Miss Lucy.  I’se done comed home an’ thar’s a gemman to see you?  Wake up!”

She shook the bundle of shawls vigorously, until the old lady was thoroughly roused and glared at her with her dark, beady eyes, while she mumbled, “You hyar, shakin’ me so, you limb.  You, Mandy Ann!  Whar did you come from?”

“Jacksonville, in course.  Whar’d you think?  An’ hyar’s a gemman come to see you, I tell you.  Wake up an’ say how d’ye.”

“Whar is he?” the old woman asked, beginning to show some interest, while the stranger arose and coming forward said, “Excuse me, madam.  It is the young lady I wish to see—­your daughter.”

“She hain’t her mother.  She’s her granny,” Mandy Ann chimed in with a good deal of contempt in her voice, as she nodded to the figure in the chair, who, with some semblance of what she once was, put out a skinny hand and said, “I’m very pleased to see you.  Call Dory.  She’ll know what to do.”

This last to Mandy Ann, who flirted away from her and said to the stranger, “She hain’t no sense mostly—­some days more, some days littler, an’ to-day she’s littler.  You wants to see Miss Dory?  She’s upstars changin’ her gown, ’case she knows you’re hyar.  I done tole her, an’ her face lit right up like de sun shinin’ in de mawnin’.  Will you gim me your caird?”