"There never was a child as good-looking from first to last. Louise favors her, and it looks like I forget sometimes that it ain't Miss Zélie; but pretty is as pretty does, that's the truth, and she was pretty in manners as well as face."
"Go on and tell us about her," begged Louise, for though they had heard it all many times there was nothing they liked so well to listen to. Nor was there anything Sukey liked so well to tell, so as she sorted and turned and rolled the stockings in a leisurely way, she began.
The sunshine came in at the window and rested on Louise's bright head and Dora's dark one, as they sat together in the same chair. Bess's seat was an upturned earthen jar, and the same sunlight fell on her small folded hands and on the brown wrinkled ones at work with the stockings.
"Well, you know how Miss Zélie's ma died when she wasn't as big as little Carie, and the last thing she said to me was, 'Sukey, you mind my baby.' Miss Elizabeth always set great store by me, and I 'lowed that freedom or nothin' could take me from old Master's family. It was powerful lonesome in this big house in those days. Your grandpa took your grandma's death mighty hard, and he had to travel a good deal for his health, so Miss Zélie didn't have any one to look after her but Mr. William and me. Mr. Frank, your pa, was away at college. Then Mr. William got married. Miss Marcia is a good woman and kind-hearted, but she ain't any gift at managin' children, and that's the truth. Miss Zélie was a smart, lively child with a temper of her own, and if I do say it she would have had a hard time if it had not been for her old mammy. When she was ten years old Mr. Frank—he had been home from college a year—come to me and says, 'Sukey, I'm goin' to be married.'
"I didn't know whether to be glad or sorry, but I wished him good luck, an' he went back up North for his wife."
"That was Mamma, you know," Louise explained to Dora.
"I remember how Miss Zélie come to me, and says she, 'Mammy, do you think she will love me?'
"About that time Miss Marcia took it into her head to go to Europe. She said something about taking Miss Zélie along, but I up an' tole her that where my child went I went too, an' she 'lowed she didn't want me.
"It was the prettiest kind of a day when they came home, and we was out on the porch watchin' for them. They drove up presently with your grandpa, and Miss Elinor she came up the walk ahead of Mr. Frank, smiling as sweet us could be, an' she says, 'So this is my little sister.' I knew that minute they'd be friends.
"Your ma was dreadful fond of children, and she made a great pet of Miss Zélie, and she was as happy as a bird."