"In the usual way, I reckon, Miss Peggy. I don't often see you come in any other. But this time you sure enough look as though you had been dreaming," laughed Nelly, coming close to Shashai, who instantly remembered his manners and neighed his greeting, while Tzaritza thrust her head into the girl's arms with the gentlest insinuation. Nelly held the big head close, rested her face against it a second, then took Shashai's soft muzzle in both hands and planted a kiss just where it was most velvety, saying softly:
"I can't imagine you three separated. The picture would not be complete. But what is wrong, Miss Peggy? You look so sober you make me feel queer," for the smile had gone from the girl's face and Nelly was quick to feel the seriousness of her expression.
"Perhaps I'm cross and cranky, Nelly. At any rate I've no business to be here this minute. I started for Annapolis, but my wits got wool-gathering, I reckon, and I let Shashai turn in here without noticing where he was going. Aunt Katherine will reach Annapolis before I do and—then—" and Peggy stopped and wagged her head as though pursuit of the subject would better be dropped. Nelly's face clouded. It had not required the two days of Mrs. Stewart's visit to circulate a good many reports concerning her. Indeed both Jerome and old Mammy had described her at length, and the description had lost nothing upon their African tongues, nor had the experiences of the three months spent up north: Madam Stewart had figured rather conspicuously in their pictures of the "doin's up yander." Had she suspected how accurately the old colored people had gauged her, or how great an influence their gauging was likely to have upon the plans she had so carefully laid, she might have been a little more circumspect in her conduct toward them. But to her they were "just black servants" and she was entirely incapable of weighing their influence in the domestic economy, or of understanding their shrewd judgment as to the best interests of the young girl whom each, in common with all the other old servants upon the estate, loved with a devotion absolutely incomprehensible to most northern-born people. And another potent fact, entirely absent from the characteristics of the northern negro, is the fact that the southern negro servants' "kinnery" instantly adopts and maintains the viewpoint of those "nearest the throne." It is a survival of the old feudal system, unknown in the cosmopolitan North, but which even in this day, so remote from the days of slavery, makes itself very distinctly felt in many parts of the South.
And many of the servants upon the Severndale estate had been there for three generations. Hence Peggy was their "chile," and her joys or sorrows, happiness or unhappiness, were theirs, and all their kin's, to be talked over, remedied if possible, but shared if not, or made a part of their own delight in living, as the case might demand. And the ramifications of their kinship were amazing. No wonder the report that "an aunt-in-law ob de yo'ng mistress yonder at Severndale, had done come down an' ondertuck fer ter run de hull shebang an' Miss Peggy inter de bargain, what is never been run by nobody," had circulated throughout the whole community, and met with a resolute, though carefully concealed opposition—subtle, intangible, but sure to prove overwhelming in the end—the undertow, so hidden but so irresistible. All this had stolen from one pair of lips to another and, of course, been related with indignant emphasis to Jim Bolivar, Nelly's father, one of the tenants of Severndale's large estate. And he, in turn, had discussed it with Nelly, who worshipped the very ground Peggy chose to stand upon, for to Peggy Stewart Nelly owed restored health, her home rescued when ruin seemed about to claim everything her father owned, and all the happiness which had come into her lonely life.
No wonder she now looked up to the deep brown eyes with her own blue ones troubled and distressed.
CHAPTER III
HOSTILITIES SUSPENDED
During her drive into Annapolis Madam Stewart did more deep thinking than it was generally given to her shallow brain to compass. Like most of her type, she possessed a certain shrewdness, which closely touched upon cunning when she wished to gain her ends, but she had very little real cleverness, and practically no power of logical deduction.