The Colonel knew the town was full of speculation and surmises, but he did not care.  Surmises which went wide of the mark were better than the real truth would have been, and that he could not tell.  He had left a large part of his past in Florida, and trusted it would not follow him.  He could not leave the little girl, and he meant to do his duty by her, outwardly at least.  He had no love for her, and could not manufacture one.  He would rather she had never been born; but inasmuch as she was born, and was very much alive, she must be cared for.

There was a private baptism in his library one Sunday afternoon, and she was christened Amy Eudora.  Amy was for his mother; Eudora for no one knew whom, except Peter, who thought of the smelly letter, and knew that Eudora was for the young mother, dead somewhere in Florida.  But he held his tongue, and tried to make up to the little girl her loss of Shaky, for whom she cried for days.  Then, as she grew accustomed to her surroundings, she became contented, and her merry chatter filled the house from morning till night.  Every one was devoted to her, except the Colonel.  He was kind, but never encouraged her advances; never kissed her, never took her in his lap, or allowed her in his library.  She called him father, and he answered to the name, while she was Eudora Harris to others.  He tried at first to call her Amy, but she stoutly resisted.

“Me’s Dory.  Shaky and Mandy Ann calls me Dory,” she would say, with a stamp of her foot, refusing to answer to any name but Dory, which came at last to be Dora as she grew older.

She learned to read in the new school-house by the south gate of the park, and when she heard that the Colonel built it, she called it hers, and queened it over her companions with an imperiousness worthy of the Colonel himself.  When questioned of her old home her answers were vague.  There was a river somewhere, and her mother was sick, and she reckoned she had no father but Shaky.

As she grew older, she became very reticent of her past, and, if she remembered it at all, she held her tongue, like Peter.  Once, when she was more than usually aggressive, claiming not only the school-house but everything in and around it, she was told by the children that she lived with niggers till she came to Crompton Place, and they guessed her mother was one, and nobody knew anything about her anyway.  There was a fierce fight in which Dora came off victorious, with a scratch or two on her face and a torn dress.  That afternoon the Colonel was confronted by what seemed a little maniac, demanding to know if her mother was black, and if she had lived only with negroes until she came to Crompton.

“No, to both questions, and never let me hear another word on the subject as long as you live,” was the Colonel’s answer, given with a sternness before which the girl always quailed.