“Why so triste, my love?” asked her aunt entering the room.
“Cherie,” and Jeanne returned the caress that Madame bestowed upon her. “I am wishing for my mother and home. I wonder why I have not heard from my father.”
“It is strange,” admitted the lady. “And yet, child, when one considers the state of the country and how the Yankees seize mails and telegrams, and exercise such a rigorous espionage over them one cannot wonder after all. I have no doubt that he has written, but that his letters are being detained for some reason by ‘Beast’ Butler.”
Jeanne made no reply. She had ceased for some time saying anything when her aunt launched forth in a tirade against the Yankees. She was as staunch a patriot as ever, but, without words, it had been borne in upon her mind that her sentiments were unwelcome to her uncle and aunt, and that it would be better for her not to give utterance to them.
“Where is Snowball?” asked Madame Vance presently. “I wish to take you for a drive, and you are not dressed. That darky gets more shiftless every day. Where is she?”
“Hyar I is, missus.” Snowball started up from behind a huge brocaded chair so quickly that she overturned a low table upon which stood a ewer that had contained orangeade. A crash followed, and the culprit stood looking at the fragments of the pitcher with consternation written over her face.
“Come here,” and Madame’s tone was so stern that Jeanne looked at her startled. “Forty lashes you shall have for this.”
“Please’m, missus, lemme off dis time. Clar ter goodness I didn’t go ter do it.”
“Please, please,” said Jeanne tearfully. She had heard the sound of whippings once or twice, but her aunt had always taken her away from the sound immediately, and her soul sickened at the thought of them. “I could not bear to have Snowball whipped, Cherie.”
“She must be punished,” said the lady harshly. “Such carelessness cannot be tolerated for a moment.”