“Oh, Dumps, you play so cur’us,” said Diddie; “who ever heard of anybody bein’ named Mrs. Dumps? there ain’t no name like that.”

“Well, I don’t know nothin’ else,” said Dumps; “I couldn’t think of nothin’.”

“Sposin’ you be named Mrs. Washington, after General Washington?” said Diddie, who was now studying a child’s history of America, and was very much interested in it.

“All right,” said Dumps; and Mrs. Washington, with her son and daughters, was assigned apartments, and Chris was sent up with refreshments, composed of pieces of old cotton-bolls and gray moss, served on bits of broken china.

The omnibus now returned with Tot and her family, consisting of an India-rubber baby with a very cracked face, and a rag body that had once sported a china head, and now had no head of any kind; but it was nicely dressed, and there were red shoes on the feet, and it answered Tot’s purpose very well.

“Dese my ‘itty dirls,” said Tot, as Diddie received her, “an’ I tome in de bumberbuss.”

“What is your name?” asked Diddie.

“I name—­I name—­I name—­Miss Ginhouse,” said Tot, who had evidently never thought of a name, and had suddenly decided upon gin-house, as her eye fell upon that object.

“No, no, Tot, that’s a thing; that ain’t no name for folks,” said Diddie.  “Let’s play you’re Mrs. Bunker Hill, that’s a nice name.”

“Yes, I name Miss Unker Bill,” said the gentle little girl, who rarely objected to playing just as the others wished.  Miss “Unker Bill” was shown to her room; and now Riar came out, shaking her hand up and down, and saying, “Ting-er-ling—­ting-er-ling—­ting-er-ling!” That was the dinner-bell, and they all assembled around a table that Riar had improvised out of a piece of plank supported on two bricks, and which was temptingly set out with mud pies and cakes and green leaves, and just such delicacies as Riar and Diddie could pick up.

As soon as Mrs. Washington laid eyes on the mud cakes and pies, she exclaimed,

“Oh, Diddie, I’m er goin’ ter be the cook, an’ make the pies an’ things.”

“I doin’ ter be de took an’ make de itty mud takes,” said Miss Unker Bill, and the table at once became a scene of confusion.

“No, Dumps,” said Diddie, “somebody’s got to be stoppin’ at the hotel, an’ I think the niggers ought to be the cooks.”

“But I want ter make the mud cakes,” persisted Dumps, an’ Tot can be the folks at the hotel—­she and the doll-babies.”

“No, I doin’ ter make de mud takes, too,” said Tot, and the hotel seemed in imminent danger of being closed for want of custom, when a happy thought struck Dilsey.

“Lor-dy, chil’en!  I tell yer:  le’s play Ole Billy is er gemman what writ ter Miss Diddie in er letter dat he was er comin’ ter de hotel, an’ ter git ready fur ’im gins he come.”

“Yes,” said Diddie, “and lets play Dumps an’ Tot was two mo’ niggers I had ter bring up from the quarters to help cook; an’ we’ll make out Ole Billy is some great general or somethin’, an’ we’ll have ter make lots of cakes an’ puddin’s for ’im.  Oh, I know; we’ll play he’s Lord Burgoyne.”