After that the little girl staid mostly with the stewardess, and was comparatively happy.  Judy was a great comfort to her, and she kept it hugged to her bosom through the day, and slept with it at night, and when she reached the Crompton House it was in the inside pocket of her cloak.  Becoming detached from the pocket as she rolled on the floor it fell at Peter’s feet, making him start, it was so unlike anything he had seen in years.

“Great guns!” he exclaimed, spurning it with his foot, and sending it near the child, who snatched it up with a cry of “Judy, Judy, my Judy.”

“Who is she, and where did she come from?” the cook asked, while Jane tried to soothe the excited child.

“Her name is Eudora Harris,” the Colonel said.  “Her father is a sneaking scoundrel; her mother was a good woman, and my friend.  She is dead, and there is no one to care for her child but myself.  I have brought her home to bring up as my own.  Jaky is the colored man who took care of her with Mandy Ann, a colored girl.  She will cry for her by and by.”

As if to prove his words true the child set up a howl for Mandy Ann; “me wants Mandy Ann,” while the Colonel continued, “She is to be treated in all respects as a daughter of the house.  Get her some decent clothes at once, you women who understand such things.  Don’t mind expense.  Give her a pretty room, and I think you’d better hunt up some young person to look after her.  Until the girl comes Jane must sleep in the room with her, and don’t bother me unless it is necessary; I feel quite used up, and as if I had been through a thrashing-machine.  I am not used to children, and this one is—­well, to say the least, very extraordinary.”

This was a good deal for the Colonel to say at one time to his servants, who listened in wonder, none of them knowing anything except Peter, who kept his knowledge to himself.  And this was all the explanation the Colonel gave, either to his servants, or to the people outside who knew better than to question him, and who never mentioned the child in his presence.  Gossip, however, was rife in the neighborhood, and many were the surmises as to the parentage of the little girl who for a time turned the Crompton House upside down, and made it a kind of bedlam when her fits were on, and she was rolling on the floor, and bumping her head, with cries for Shaky and Mandy Ann.  She was homesick, and cared nothing for the beautiful things they brought her.  Against the pretty dresses she fought at first, and then submitted to them, but kept her old one in a corner of her room, and Susie, the girl hired to attend her, sometimes found her there asleep with her head upon it, and Judy held closely in her arms.  They bought her a doll-house which was fitted up with everything calculated to please a child, but after inspecting it a while she turned from it with a cry for her “shady” under the palm tree in the clearing.  The doll, Mandy Ann, which the Colonel had bought in Savannah, never took the place of Judy, who was her favorite, together with the scarlet cloak, which she would seldom let out of her sight.  During the day she kept it round her, saying, “Me’s cold,” and at night she had it near her bed where she could see it the first thing in the morning.