—Tennyson.
A misty, overcast morning dawned gloomily after the night of Mrs. Conway's ball. In spite of it the lady rose early. She had not slept at all, and, nervous and depressed, she roamed over the disordered house, from which the servants were busily removing the debris of the evening's entertainment. Every moment she expected to see her nephew enter, and as the day wore on and he failed to present himself, her impatience brooked control no longer, and she sent a messenger into Norfolk to the National Hotel, his usual stopping-place in the city, to inquire after him.
The boy's swift horse carried him into the city and back in two hours. He came into the lady's presence bowing and grinning, the very picture of a sleek, good-natured, well-fed darkey.
"Did you see him, John?"
"Yaas'm, I see him," grinned John, his hands in his pockets complacently jingling the nickels his young master had just bestowed on him.
"You gave him my message? What did he say?"
"Yaas'm; he say as how"—here John stopped jingling his nickels long enough to make a low dip of his woolly head, as befitting the proper deliverance of the message he had—"he will do heself de hon'r ob takin' tea wid you dis even."
"Was that all he said?"
"All he says to you, ma'am—he ast me how come I stay 'long wid ole mis' all dis time, and not go off like do rest of de little nigs? I tell him——"
Here John stopped to chuckle softly at the remembrance.