“Know’d her?  I reckon so,—­anywhar in de dark.  Praise de Lawd, an’ now let His servant ’part in peace, ’case my eyes has seen de lil chile oncet mo’,” Mandy Ann exclaimed, going up to Amy and putting her hands on her shoulders.

“She’s ‘peatin’ some o’ de chant in de Pra’r Book.  Mandy Ann is mighty pious, she is,” Jake said in a low tone, while Amy drew back a little, and looked timidly at the tall negress calling her lil chile Dory.

“Mandy Ann wasn’t so big,” she said, turning to the twins, Alex and Aaron, Judy and Dory, who brought the past back more vividly when Mandy Ann was about their size.

A look of inquiry passed from Mandy Ann to Jake, who touched his forehead, while Mandy whispered, “Quar, like ole Miss an’ all of ’em.  Oh, de pity of it!  What happened her?” Then to Amy she said, with all the motherhood of her ten children in her voice, “Doan’ you ’member me, Mandy Ann, what use’ to dress you in de mornin’, an’ comb yer har, an’ wass yer face?”

“Up, instead of down,” Amy said quickly, while everybody laughed instead of herself.

“To be shu’,” Mandy Ann rejoined.  “I reckon I did sometimes wass up ’sted of down.  I couldn’t help it, ‘case you’s gen’rally pullin’ an’ haulin’ an’ kickin’ me to git away, but you ‘members me, an’ Judy, wid dis kind of face?”

She touched her eyes and nose and mouth to show where Judy’s features were marked with ink, and then Amy laughed, and as if the mention of Judy took her back to the vernacular of her childhood, she said, “Oh, yes, I done ’members Judy.  Whar is she?”

This lapse of her mother into negro dialect was more dreadful to Eloise than anything which had gone before, but Mr. Mason, who read her concern in her face, said to her, “It’s all right, and shows she is taking up the tangled threads.”

No one present knew of Judy’s sale at the Rummage, and no one could reply to the question, “Whar is she?” Amy forgot it in a moment in her interest in the twins, whom Mandy presented one after another, saying, “I’ve six mo’ grow’d up, some on ’em, an’ one is married, ’case I’se old,—­I’se fifty-three, an’ you’s about forty.”

To this Amy paid no attention.  She was still absorbed with the twins, who, Mandy Ann told her, had worn her white frock at their christening.  Mandy Ann had not yet heard of the finding of the marriage certificate, and when Jake told her she did not seem greatly surprised.

“I allus knew she was married, without a stifficut,” she said.  “I b’lieved it the fust time he come befo’ lil Miss Dory was bawn.”

“Tell me about his coming,” Eloise said, and Mandy Ann, who liked nothing better than to talk, began at the beginning, and told every particular of the first visit, when Miss Dora wore the white gown she was married in and buried in, and the rose on her bosom.  “And you think this is it?” Eloise asked, holding carefully in a bit of paper the ashes of what had once been a rose.