A Modern Madonna

by Caroline Abbot Stanley

"Oh, Mammy Cely," she begged when at last she tore herself away from him, "don't let him forget me!"

"I aint gwineter let him forgit you, Miss Margaret—don't you worry! Whenever I think of Cass I gwinter call you to that chile's 'membrance. Yaas 'm, I is so!"

And on this assurance she was forced to rest.

Twice a week the court had said. Those visits came to be Margaret's meat and drink. To the child as time went by they were only an incident in his daily life. He had settled into the every-day routine of the place, lonely sometimes, but finding in Mammy Cely and Uncle Tobe companions very much to his taste. Every old negro of the ancient school is an Uncle Remus to some child, and Uncle Tobe was no exception. He and his wife, Aunt Dicey, lived in one of the cabins behind the house as they had done before the war. They had been pensioners of Richard De Jarnette's through all the years of his residence in Washington. Now that he had come back to Elmhurst with his little nephew, they fell into line as cook and coachman. The old carriage, so long unused, was brought out for Margaret's special use, Uncle Tobe furbishing it up for the occasion with tremulous eagerness. It seemed to him almost like a revival of the old days when "Miss Julia" had to be driven around.

They were all very kind to the child. He fed the chickens and hunted for eggs, and played with the gourds that Aunt Dicey still planted and hoarded. She always had pomegranates too that she took from some mysterious place about her bed. But he liked the gourds best, because they were of so many different sizes that he could play they were almost anything.

He followed Mammy Cely about incessantly through the day and as evening came on would run down through the lawn with the big elm trees in it to meet his Uncle Richard. Mr. De Jarnette fell into the habit of looking for the solitary little figure perched on the post of the big gate. When he saw him Philip would sing out, "Hello, Unker Wichard!" and then, dropping to the ground, would tug manfully to open the gate which Richard by a sleight-of-hand performance most remarkable to Philip, could open from his horse. It was such a manifest mortification to the child not to be able to do this from the ground that Mr. De Jarnette sent Uncle Tobe down one day to remedy the sagging so that the feat could be accomplished. Then Philip's joy and pride knew no bounds, and when the gate was opened with much tugging and blowing, Richard would lean down and lift the child in front of him for a canter up the road. He came to look forward to it with almost as much pleasure as Philip did. He could remember when Victor did the same thing.

The day Margaret came Mammy Cely had shown her Philip's room, a great gloomy unattractive apartment, whose windows like those of the library below were carefully curtained from the light.

"A horrible room for a child!" Margaret had exclaimed. "It looks like a prison."

Mammy was deeply disappointed. For her part she could see nothing the matter with the room. It was exactly as her Miss Julia had left it. It had never been changed even by the second Mrs. De Jarnette. And it was scrupulously clean. She had herself painted the hearth that morning with a preparation of brickdust and milk laid on with a rag, which was supposed in her day to put the finishing touch to an apartment with an open fireplace.

"A child ought to have cheerful surroundings and light," Margaret had said, pushing back the heavy curtain. "And this paper! It is enough to give him the horrors."