“I ’clar for’t, yes,” Mandy said, “I seen her put it somewhar with the card he done gin me.  You’se found it?”

Eloise nodded and held fast to the relics of a past which in this way was linking itself to the present.  “Tell us of the second time, when he took mother,” Eloise suggested, and here Mandy Ann was very eloquent, describing everything in detail, repeating much which Jake had told, telling of the ring,—­a real stone, sent her from Savannah, and which she had given her daughter as it was too small for her now.  From a drawer in the chamber above she brought a little white dress, stiff with starch and yellow and tender with time, which she said “lil Miss Dory wore when she first saw her father.”

This Eloise seized at once, saying, “You will let me have it as something which belonged to mother far back.”

Mandy Ann looked doubtful.  There would probably be grandchildren, and Jake’s scruples might be overcome and the white gown do duty again as a christening robe.  But Jake spoke up promptly.

“In course it’s your’n, an’ de book, too, if you wants it, though it’s like takin’ a piece of de ole times.  Strange Miss Dora don’t pay no ’tention, but is so wropp’d up in dem twins.  ’Specs it seems like when de little darkys use’ to play wid her,” he continued, looking at Amy, who, if she heard what Mandy Ann was saying, gave no sign, but seemed, as Jake said, “wropp’d up” in the twins.

There was not much more for Mandy Ann to tell of the Colonel, except to speak of the money he had sent to her and Jake, proving that he was not “the wustest man in the world, if she did cuss him kneeling on Miss Dory’s grave the night after the burial.”  She spoke of that and of “ole Miss Thomas, who was the last to gin in,” and wouldn’t have done it then but for the ring on her finger.  At this point Jake, who thought she had told enough, said to her, “Hole on a spell.  Your tongue is like a mill wheel when it starts.  Thar’s some things you or’to keep to your self.  Ole man Crompton is dead, an’ God is takin’ keer of him.  He knows all the good thar was at the last, an’ I ’specs thar was a heap.”

By this time Amy had tired of the twins, who had fingered her rings and buttons, and stroked her dress and hair, and called her a pretty lady, and asked her on the sly for a nickel.  She was getting restless, when Jakey said, “If you’d like to see your mudder’s grave, come wid me.”

From the house to the enclosure where the Harrises were buried he had made a narrow road, beside which eucalyptus trees and oleanders were growing, and along this walk the party followed him to Eudora’s grave.

“I can have ‘Crompton’ put hyar now that I am shu’,” Jake said, pointing to the vacant space after Eudora.  “I wish dar was room for ’belobed wife of Cunnel Crompton.’  I reckons, though, she wasn’t ‘belobed,’ or why was he so dogon mean to her?” he added, kneeling by the grave and picking a dead leaf and bud which his quick eye had detected amid the bloom.  “Couldn’t you done drap a tear ‘case your mother is lyin’ here?” he said to Amy, who shook her head.