A knock now sounded in the hall and I could hear the shuffling of Jim’s feet, and the swinging back of the door. Then Fitz’s card was brought in—not on the silver tray this time, but clutched in the monkey paw of the pickaninny.
Aunt Nancy looked at him with a certain well-assumed surprise and drew back from the proffered card.
“James, is that the way to bring me a card? Have I not told you often——”
The boy looked at her, his face in a tangle of emotions. “De Pan! Fo’ Gord, Mist’iss, I done forgot dat pan,” and with a spring he was out again, returning with Fitz’s pasteboard on the silver tray, closely followed by that gentleman himself, who was shaking with laughter over the incident.
“One of your body-guard, Aunt Nancy?” said Fitz, as he bent over and kissed her hand. It was astonishing how easily Fitz fell into these same old-time customs when he was with the dear lady—he, of all men.
“No, dear friend, one of the new race of whom I am trying to make a good servant. His grandmother in slave times belonged to a neighbor of ours, and this little fellow is the youngest of six. I’ve just been telling the Major what a trial he is to me. And now let me look at you. Ah! you have been working too hard. I see it in your eyes. Haven’t you had some dreadful strain lately?”
Fitz declared on his honor, with one hand over his upper watch pocket, and the other still in hers, that he never felt better in his life, and that so idle had he become lately, that it was hard work for him to keep employed. And then Aunt Nancy made him sit beside her on the hair-cloth sofa, the one on which Fitz would not permit the Colonel to sleep, and I, being nearest, tucked a cushion under her absurdly small feet and rearranged about her shoulders her Indian mull shawl, which didn’t require any rearranging at all. And after Fitz had told the dear lady for the third time how glad he was to see her, and after she had told him how glad she was to see both of us, and how she hoped dear George would soon secure the money necessary to build his railroad, so that we could all come to Carter Hall for next Christmas, she adding gravely that she really couldn’t see any need for the road’s existence or any hope of its completion, although she never said so to dear George, she being a woman and not expected to know much of such things;—after, I say, all these delightful speeches and attentions and confidences had been indulged in, Aunt Nancy bent her head, turned her sweet face framed in the lace cap and ribbons, first towards me and then back to Fitz again—she had been talking to Fitz all this time, I listening—and said with the air of a fairy godmother entertaining two children:
“And now I’ve got a great Christmas surprise for both of you, and you shall have one guess apiece as to what it is.”
Fitz, with the memories of a former Christmas at Carter Hall still fresh in mind, and knowing the dear lady’s generosity, and having seen the biggest bundle of feathers and the longest pair of legs he had ever laid his eyes on hanging head down on the measly wall of the shabby yard as he entered, screwed up his eyes, cudgelled his brain by tapping his forehead with his forefinger, and blurted out:
“Wild turkey stuffed with chestnuts.”