"That settles it," he said. "I shall send my housekeeper to you from Elmhurst. She is reliable and kind. You can depend upon her fully. She has always lived with us, and there is nothing she likes so well as to mother people."
Her chin quivered like a child's. "I—I think I need mothering," she said.
He beat a hasty retreat. Her helplessness wrung his heart.
Two hours later Mammy Cely presented herself before Margaret—rotund of figure, dark and shining of face, thick-lipped and flat-nosed. But in her kind eyes was the brooding spirit of motherhood. Mammy Cely was of the old school. As she stood there in her clean dark gingham, white apron, white head handkerchief, and a three-cornered piece of like immaculateness crossing her breast, she was the embodiment of a past civilization, an archaic reminder of the old régime which everybody condemns, which nobody wants revived, but which has its sacred memories of friendships between high and low, that come, as all memories do, only to those who have experienced in the far past that for which the memory stands. To Margaret this humble friend was a gift from Heaven.
But all this time Mammy Cely was unobtrusively taking in the situation.
"That child's done stood all she ken now," she was saying to herself. "Pretty soon she gwineter break down—that she is!" Aloud she remarked, respectfully, "Yaas, 'm, 'tis mighty bad 'bout Mr. Victor bein' called away right now. Marse Richard was tellin' me about it.... But nemmine, honey, we gwineter s'prise him when he gits home, ain't we? We gwineter have the party all over and ever'body gone home but us and de li'l' gen'l'man." She was talking to her as one speaks to a frightened child. "There!... There!... Mammy Cely gwineter take keer of you, honey! Don't you be skeered. She done tuk keer of a heap er ladies in her day. She knows jes' what to do. You needn't to worry. She gwineter stay right here.... Yo' maid gone too? Well, I do say! These here triflin' Washington niggers ain't no 'count. No 'm, they ain't! Well, nemmine! I gwineter be yo' maid now—Marse Richard say so—and yo' mammy too. Then befo' I go away I'll git you somebody ef I has to peruse this town. Yaas, 'm, I will so! I wouldn't stand, honey. Set down now."
She asked the frightened girl a few questions, putting in a running commentary of soothing, confidence-inspiring remarks, and Margaret found herself settling down in profound relief upon the broad foundation of her practical knowledge.
"And you got all the little clo's ready?... Well, I do say! Ain't they scrumptious! Humph! Jes' look at the 'shorance of them little shearts! Honey, they look lak they was holdin' out they arms for a man!... But I declar this here highfalutin' lacy skeart do sho'ly belong to a little lady! Well, whichever it is, honey, it's gwineter be yourn, and when you feel that little chile on yo' breas' and hol' them little hands in yourn, you gwineter furgit all 'bout the pain and the sufferin'—and the loneliness—"
The rain clouds had been gathering all day. They could be held back no longer. Slowly, drops began to fall—the big portentous ones that come before the storm. If this new maid had come in cold and business-like she could have withstood it, but this was the mother-note she had always lacked in her life song. A convulsive sob broke from her overburdened heart, hearing which and recognizing the futility of further words, Mammy Cely opened her arms.