however, gradually wore off under Jack’s geniality and Eloise’s friendliness, and Amy’s sweetness of manner as she called him Cousin Howard, and said she hoped he would look upon Crompton as his home.  Then he was to have twenty thousand dollars when matters were adjusted, and that was something to one who, when he came to Crompton, had scarcely a dollar.  His visit had paid, and, though he was not the master, he was the favored guest and cousin, who, at Eloise’s request, took charge of affairs after Jack went home to New York.

Early in December Jake came from the South, and was welcomed warmly by Amy and Eloise.  To the servants he was a great curiosity, with his negro dialect and quaint ways, but no one could look at the old man’s honest face without respecting him.  Even Peter, who detected about him an order of the bad tobacco which had so offended his nostrils in the letters to his master, and who on general principles disliked negroes, was disarmed of his prejudices by Jake’s confiding simplicity and thorough goodness.  Taking him one day for a drive around the country and through the village, he bought him some first-class cigars with the thought “Maybe they’ll take that smell out of his clothes.”

“Thankee, Mas’r Peter, thankee,” Jake said, smacking his lips with his enjoyment of the flavor of the Havanas.  “Dis yer am mighty fine, but I s’pecks I or’to stick to my backy.  I done brought a lot wid me.”

He smoked the Havanas as long as they lasted, with no special diminution of odor as Peter could discover, and then returned to his backy and his clay pipe.

In the love and tender care with which she was surrounded, Amy’s mind recovered its balance to a great extent, with an occasional lapse when anything reminded her of her life in California as a public singer, or when she was very tired.  She was greatly interested in Eloise’s wedding, which was fixed for the 10th of January, her twentieth birthday.  Jack, who came from New York every week, would have liked what he called a blow-out, but the recent death of the Colonel and Amy’s mourning precluded that, and only a very few were bidden to the ceremony, which took place in the drawing-room of the Crompton House, instead of the church.  Amy gave the bride away, and a stranger would never have suspected that she was what Jakey called quar.  After Eloise left for her bridal trip she began to assume some responsibility as mistress of the house and to understand Mr. Ferris a little when he talked to her on business.  Jake was a kind of ballast to her during Eloise’s absence, but a Northern winter did not agree with the old man, who wore nearly as much clothing to keep him warm as Harry Gill, and then complained of the cold.

“Florida suits me best, and I’ve a kind of hankerin’ for de ole place whar deys all buried,” he said, and in the spring he returned to his Lares and Penates, leaving Amy a little unsettled with his loss, but she soon recovered her spirits in the excitement of going abroad.