"Ah, chillens, dat was a terrible time," returned the old woman, sighing and shaking her head.
"Yes, mammy," assented Elsie; "you remember it well?"
"Deed I does, chile;" and rousing with the recollection into almost youthful excitement and energy, she plunged into the story, telling it in a graphic way that enchained her listeners, though to two of them it was not new, and one occasionally assisted her memory or supplied a missing link in the chain of circumstances.[A]
[Footnote A: For the details of this story, see "Elsie's Motherhood.">[
CHAPTER VIII.
"Next stood hypocrisy, with holy leer,
Soft smiling and demurely looking down,
But hid the dagger underneath the gown."
—DRYDEN.
While old mammy told her story to her three listeners in the veranda at Ion, a train was speeding southward, bearing Edward and Zoe on their homeward way.
Zoe, in charmingly becoming and elegant traveling attire, her fond young husband by her side, ready to anticipate every wish and gratify it if in his power, was extremely comfortable, and found great enjoyment, now in chatting gaily with him, now sitting silent by his side watching the flying panorama of forest and prairie, hill, valley, rock, river and plain.
At length her attention was attracted to something going on within the car.