"Well, 'fo' the Lord!" said Mammy Cely to herself. "He's still harpin' on that same ole string." Then with animation, "What is it, honey? What gwineter work that meracle?"
"You must wash in the blood of a lamb. I've thes 'membered about it. And it will make you whiter than the snow."
"That's so!" said the old woman, reverently. "Bless the Lord, I gwineter be white some day!"
She said it so confidently that Philip was still looking for the time to come.
He was a mature child for his years, like most children reared without companions of their own age. To Mr. De Jarnette, unaccustomed as he was to children, it seemed sometimes that the things he said were positively uncanny, when in fact they were but the natural working of a childish brain. Mammy Cely told him what Philip had said about the lamb.
"Where in the world did he get that?" he asked, wonderingly.
"I reckon he had heared the song and thought it meant changin' of the skins 'stidder the hearts."
The child had settled down now in his new home and seldom made any protest. Mammy Cely was very good to him and he followed her about from morning till night. His Uncle Richard had fallen into the habit of having him in the library with him for an hour after dinner, a privilege which Philip greatly valued and did not abuse. He seldom cried now or asked for his mother, appearing to understand instinctively that this was a subject which his uncle would not like. But he talked freely of "Sous Haven" and the life there, the boats—particularly the "Gwand Wapids"—about the turtles that Mr. Harcourt caught for him, the forts he made him, and the bonfires they had on the beach. Mr. Harcourt was in most of his tales and Richard read a good deal between the lines.
One cool autumn night Philip sat in front of the library fire in his little chair that Richard had brought out for him.
"Unker Wichard, do you ever woast marsh-mallows in your fire?"