“And did the bird sing with her?” a softer look coming upon the childish face.
“I don’t remember that it did, though she was always a friend to the birds that built their nests about us. She kept the boys from breaking them up or trapping them. Every spring they sang here in the trees. They seemed to know that she was looking after them. That must have been what she was born for. She was always watching over something or somebody.” He swallowed hard. “I can see her now, bending over her work, late at night, stitching away, with her fingers on those gray clothes for the boys in the army—your Uncle Billy and your father.”
“Was she little, then?” Esther inquired, while with one hand she clasped his wrist, and with the other stroked his brow.
“No. When the war broke out, she was just about to be married to your father, who had been appointed Captain under General Lee. She made a coat for him and quilted money in the collar. She had a way of doing things that nobody would have thought of. You remind me of her.” He folded his hands across his stick and was silent for a moment. “There is much about her life that I want you to know, and bear in mind, now that you are getting old enough to understand. She had great hopes for you, for your music. I’ve been thinking how proud she would be if she could know that you had got along well enough to be invited to play at the University—on commencement night at that. I ask nothing higher for you than that you make such a woman as your mother.”
They did not see the old negro, ragged to the skin, coming around the corner of the house, carrying his discolored straw hat in one hand and mopping his face on a faded cotton handkerchief.
CHAPTER II.
“G’mornin’, Marse Hardin.”
“Howdy, Sandy. Where did you come from? I thought you’d gone clear out of the country, for good.”
“Nor sir, nor sir. You jes’ let a nigger git a taste of dis here spring water, and he’s charmed, conjured, he kyant stay away if he do go. But I come back, dis time, to see my young marster—Marse Davy Pool.”
“How is he to-day?”