But what could he do?  They were Amy’s, and if she had made up her mind to send them, it would take more than his opposition to prevent it.  She was very gentle and yielding as a whole, but behind the gentleness and sweetness he knew there was a spirit he did not like to rouse.  He must manage some other way.  He had told Ruby he would neither give his clothes nor money to the farce, and he prided himself on never going back on his word.  But he didn’t tell her he wouldn’t buy anything, and his face brightened as he said, very briskly, “Peter!”

“Yes, sir,” was the prompt reply.

“Hold your tongue!”

“Yes, sir,” was Peter’s still more prompt reply, and his master continued, “I don’t care a rap about those dresses, but I won’t have Mandy Ann and the nigger baby and the doll house sold.  I may be a hard old cur.  I s’pose I am, but I have now and then a streak of,—­I don’t know what,—­clinging to the years of Mrs. Amy’s childhood.  She turned the house upside down.  She raised the very old Harry sometimes, but she got into our hearts somehow, didn’t she?”

“Yes, a long ways,” was Peter’s reply, as he waited for what was next to come, and looked curiously at the Colonel, who sat with his eyes closed, clutching the arms of his chair tightly, as if suffering from a fearful twinge.

But if he were, he did not think of it.  His mind was again in the palmetto clearing, and he was standing by Dory’s grave in the sand, and a little child was holding his hand, and looking at him with eyes which had in them something of the same expression which had once quickened his pulse, and made his heart beat with a thrill he fancied was love, but which had died almost as soon as it was born.  As a result of that episode he had Amy, whom he did love, and because he loved her so much, he clung to the mementoes of her babyhood, when she had been a torment and a terror, and still a diversion in his monotonous life.

“Peter!” he said again.  “Hold your tongue, but get them somehow.  Who is head of this tomfoolery?”

“Ruby Ann is about as big a head as there is, I guess.  She and a woman from York State,” Peter replied, and the Colonel continued, “Well, I s’pose those things will have to go to the sale, if Mrs. Amy says so, but I won’t have them mixed with the quill wheels and boot-jacks and Widow Biggs’s foot-stove and brass kettle, and I won’t have a pack of idiots looking them over and buying them and saying they belonged to the Cromptons.  Mandy Ann Crompton and Judy Crompton would sound fine,—­both niggers!  No, sir!  You are to go quietly to Ruby Ann and buy ’em!  Do you hear?  Buy ’em!  You knew Mrs. Amy when she played with ’em.  You want ’em, and you’ll pay the price, no matter what it is.  Lord Harry!  I’ll bet they’ll put a big one on ’em, but no matter.  I paid thirty dollars for the doll house and five for Mandy Ann.  I don’t s’pose Judy cost anything, but the child liked it best, and I believe I’d rather have it than both the others, because—­”