Rudanthy did not answer, but as Josephine laid her flat upon the carpet, to remove her travelling cloak, she immediately closed her waxen lids, and her little mother took this for assent.
“Oh, you sweetest thing! How I do love you!”
There followed a close hug of the faithful doll, which was witnessed by a trio of colored men from a rear door, where they stood, open-eyed and mouthed, wondering what in the world the master would say when he returned and found this little trespasser upon his hearth-stone.
When Rudanthy had been embraced, to the detriment of her jute ringlets and her mistress’ comfort, Josephine curled down on the rug before the grate to put the doll asleep, observing:
“You’re so cold, Rudanthy. Colder than I am, even. Your precious hands are like ice. You must lie right here close to the fire, ’tween me and it. By-and-by Uncle Joe will come and then—My! Won’t he be surprised? That Peter boy is so dreadful stupid, like’s not he’ll forget to say a single word about us. Never mind. He’s my papa’s twin brother. Do you know what twins are, Rudanthy? I do. Big Bridget’s sister’s got a pair of them. They’re two of a kind, though sometimes one of them is the other kind. I mean, you know, sometimes one twin isn’t a brother, it’s a sister. That’s what big Bridget’s sister’s was. Oh, dear. I’m tired. I’m hungry. I liked it better on that nice first railway car where everybody took care of me and gave me sweeties. It’s terrible still here. I—I’m afraid I’m going to sleep.”
In another moment the fear of the weary little traveller had become a fact. Rudanthy was already slumbering; and, alas! that was to prove the last of her many naps. But Josephine was unconscious of the grief awaiting her own awakening; and, fortunately, too young to know what a different welcome should have been accorded herself by the relative she had come so far to visit.
Peter peeped in, from time to time, found all peaceful, and retired in thankfulness for the temporary lull. He was trembling in his shoes against the hour when the master should return and find him so unfaithful to his trust as to have admitted that curly-haired intruder upon their dignified privacy. Yet he encouraged himself with the reflection:
“Well, no need crossin’ no bridges till you meet up with ’em, and this bridge ain’t a crossin’ till Massa Joe’s key turns in that lock. Reckon I was guided to pick out that fine duck for dinner this night, I do. S’posin’, now, the market had been poor? Huh! Every trouble sets better on a full stummick ’an a empty. Massa Joe’s powerful fond of duck, lessen it’s spoiled in the cookin’. I’ll go warn that ’Pollo to be mighty careful it done to a turn.”
Peter departed kitchen ward, where he tarried gossipping over the small guest above stairs and the probable outcome of her advent.
“Nobody what’s a Christian goin’ to turn a little gell outen their doors such an evenin’ as this,” said Apollo, deftly basting the fowl in the pan.