"I see you have black and white here," said Clayton, glancing around the circle.
"Laws, yes," said Milly, looking complacently around; "I don't make no distinctions of color,—I don't believe in them. White chil'en, when they 'haves themselves, is jest as good as black, and I loves 'em jest as well."
"Don't you sometimes think it a little hard you should have to work so in your old age?"
"Why, bress you, honey, no! I takes comfort of my money as I goes along. Dere's a heap in me yet," she said, laughing. "I's hoping to get dis yer batch put out and take in anoder afore I die. You see," she said, "dis yer's de way I took to get my heart whole. I found it was getting so sore for my chil'en I'd had took from me, 'pears like the older I grow'd the more I thought about 'em; but long's I keeps doing for chil'en it kinder eases it. I calls 'em all mine; so I's got good many chil'en now."
We will inform our reader, in passing, that Milly, in the course of her life, on the humble wages of a laboring woman, took from the streets, brought up, and placed in reputable situations, no less than forty destitute children.[5]
When Clayton returned to Boston, he received a note written in a graceful female hand, from Fanny, expressing her gratitude for his kindness to her and her brother, and begging that he would come and spend a day with them at their cottage in the vicinity of the city. Accordingly, eight o'clock the next morning found him whirling in the cars through green fields and pleasant meadows, garlanded with flowers and draped with bending elms, to one of those peaceful villages which lie like pearls on the bosom of our fair old mother, Massachusetts.
Stopping at —— station, he inquired his way up to a little eminence which commanded a view of one of those charming lakes which open their blue eyes everywhere through the New England landscape. Here, embowered in blossoming trees, stood a little Gothic cottage, a perfect gem of rural irregularity and fanciful beauty. A porch in the front of it was supported on pillars of cedar, with the rough bark still on, around which were trained multitudes of climbing roses, now in full flower. From the porch a rustic bridge led across a little ravine into a summer-house, which was built like a nest into the branches of a great oak which grew up from the hollow below the knoll on which the house stood.
A light form, dressed in a pretty white wrapper, came fluttering across the bridge, as Clayton ascended the steps of the porch. Perhaps our readers may recognize in the smoothly-parted brown hair, the large blue eyes, and the bashful earnestness of the face, our sometime little friend Fanny; if they do not, we think they'll be familiar with the cheery "ho, ho, ho," which comes from the porch, as our old friend Tiff, dressed in a respectable suit of black, comes bowing forward. "Bress de Lord, Mas'r Clayton,—it's good for de eyes to look at you! So, you's come to see Miss Fanny, now she's come to her property, and has got de place she ought for to have. Ah, ah!—Old Tiff allers know'd it! He seed it—he know'd de Lord would bring her out right, and he did. Ho! ho! ho!"