Peggy Stewart at School

by Gabrielle E. Jackson

"Look here, Martha Harrison, how long have you been at Severndale?"

"Nigh on to twenty years, sir, and full fifteen years with that blessed child's mother before she ever heard tell of this place. I took care of her, as right well you know, long before she was as old as Miss Peggy."

"And have I ever ordered any changes made in her rules?"

"None to my knowledge, sir. They was pretty sensible ones and there didn't seem any reason to change them."

"Well, you're pretty long-headed, and until you do see reason to change 'em let 'em stand and quit pestering me. You're the Exec. on this ship until I see fit to appoint a new one and when I think of doing that I'll give you due notice."

But Mammy would have exploded had she not expressed her views. Harrison had chosen the moment when Captain Stewart had gone to his room just before supper that eventful Sunday evening, but Mammy spoke when she carried up to him the little jug of mulled cider for which Severndale was famous and which, when cider was to be had, she had never failed to carry to "her boy," as Neil Stewart, in spite of his forty-six years, still seemed to old Mammy.

Tapping at the door of his sitting-room, she entered at his "Come in." She found him standing before a large silver-framed photograph of Peggy's mother. It had been taken shortly before her death and when such a tragic ending to their ideal life had least been dreamed possible. A fancy-dress ball had been given by the young officers stationed at the Academy and Mrs. Stewart had attended it gowned as "Marie Stuart," wearing a superb black velvet gown and the widely-known "Marie Stuart coif and ruff" of exquisite Point de Venice lace. She had never looked lovelier, or more stately in her life, and that night Neil Stewart was the proudest man on the ballroom floor. Then he had insisted upon a famous Washington photographer taking this beautiful picture and—well, it was the last ever taken of the wife he adored, for within another month she had dropped asleep forever.

Good old Mammy's eyes were very tender as she looked at her boy, and instead of saying what she had come to say: "ter jist nachelly an' pintedly 'spress her min'," she went close to his side and looking at the lovely face smiling at her, said:

"Dar weren't never, an' dar ain' never gwine ter be no sich lady as dat a-one, Massa Neil, lessen it gwine be Miss Peggy. She favor her ma mo' an' mo' every day she livin', an' I wisht ter Gawd her ma was right hyer dis minit fer ter see it, dat I do."

"Amen! Mammy," was Captain Stewart's reply. "Peggy needs more than we can give her just now, no matter how hard we try. The trouble is she seems to have grown up all in a minute apparently while we have been thinking she was a child."