Mammy Cely took the photograph and looked at it with interest, shaking her head and setting her lips together.
"That sholy is got the favor of Miss Margaret,—and Philip too. Jes' look at the little thing with his face pressed up ag'in hers. That's what he wants to do now! A chile don't want no mo' heaven than that. Yes, sir,"—respectfully—"I reckon that'll do him a heap er good. That young girl certainly was thoughtful! She was so."
There was the slightest drawing down of the corners of Mammy Cely's mouth, as if to combat a tendency they had to go up.
Richard had not much more than settled himself again with John Fiske when he heard Mammy Cely lumbering down the stairs.
"Marse Richard!"
"Well? What do you want now?"
His tone was decidedly irritated.
"I reckon you'll have to come. The picture don't 'pear to meet the case. Hit's worse an' mo' of it! Soon as he seed his ma's face he busted right out. He's jes' howlin' now."
Very reluctantly Mr. De Jarnette ascended to his nephew's room. Frightful wails corroborated the truth of Mammy Cely's assertions and the accuracy of her descriptive powers. The sounds stopped abruptly as the gentleman entered the room, for a man was an unknown quantity in Philip's experience, and his uncle was a stranger to him. But such a tempest of lamentation cannot be shut off entirely at a moment's notice. The child's breath came in convulsive sobs that threatened to disrupt his little body.
"What is the matter, Philip?" asked Mr. De Jarnette, sitting down by the bed. "What are you crying about?"