"Mandy is a leetle apt to spoil the young niggers," said her peace-making mother. "But then she wuz always so powerful fond o' children."
Amanda patted her mother's shoulder, while a far-away look came into her eyes as she fixed them on a distant hill, where the newly plowed earth lay darkly red against the tender sky-tints, and the sun swept down upon one spot, covered with young wheat, and spread over it like the caressing touch of a golden hand.
She was passionately fond of children—this fiery, tender-hearted woman, who showed so many prickles to the grown people who approached her incautiously. And Vivian was not. So much the more diplomatic, so much the more polished, so full of gentleness toward women and forbearance toward their troublesome little ones—was it possible that it was he who failed in patience and kindness, and the forward Amanda who must be credited with the possession of both, when helpless hands were stretched out toward her? Fauquier County would have shaken its head over such a question. Fauquier County said that Vivian Thomas was the mildest and best humored young man in the world except when things happened that he had a right to be angry about; but that Amanda Powell was rather too spunky and high-strung for any man except a saint to get along with peaceably. For her mother's sake—and also, a little in spite of its preternaturally wise judgment—for the sake of certain winning ways of her own, the county people liked her; but Vivian, they adored.
And so, overshadowed by this disadvantage, of which she was not quite unconscious, the young wife descended from the wagon, helped out as gracefully and tenderly as he had helped her out of another vehicle the day we first saw her, by her courteous husband, and entered the door of her new home.
The first person they laid eyes upon was the shock-headed, wild-eyed little creature called Admonia, who dropped a flower-pot she was carrying through the hall, and without stopping to pick up the pieces, raced to the kitchen, shouting:
"Mis' Mandy and Mr. Vivian done come home, fur shore! Whoopy! Ain't I glad! Now, we'uns gwine ter have times!"
Admonia was a prophet.
II.
"Admonia!" called a woman's voice, and in a twinkling the owner followed and stopped in the last one of the long row of outbuildings that spread beyond the dining-room of Benvenew.