“Why had this affliction been sent upon her?” he asked himself. If he had sinned why should punishment be sent upon the innocent and helpless? He rebelled against the text wherein it is taught that evil deeds shall be visited upon the progeny of the doer unto the third and fourth generations.
Far off in lovely England, ancestral halls might yet await her coming, if, perchance, Destiny should leave him in Fortune’s lap. There was a letter lying snugly in his pocket, from a firm in London, that promised much, if——
It was near the noon siesta, and the Colonel sat on the piazza smoking his pipe and waiting the time to blow the horn for dinner. His daughter sat there, too, with an open book on her lap, and a dreamy look in her deep blue eyes that would wander from the printed page to the beautiful scene before her.
The sound of sharp words in a high-pitched voice and answering sobs broke in upon the quiet scene.
“There’s Mrs. Thomson scolding Tennie again,” observed Lillian. The words of that lady came to them distinctly from the hallway:
“What’s the matter with you to-day? You leave your work for the other girls. What are you moping about? Is it Luke?”
“Luke been conjured,” came in a stifled voice.
“By whom?”
Mrs. Thomson was a woman of considerable education and undoubted piety, but her patience was as short as pie-crust. At her question all Tennie’s wrath broke forth.
“Dat yaller huzzy, Clorinder; she conjured Luke till he gone plum wil’ over her. Ef eber I gits my han’s on her, she goin’ ’member me de longes’ day she lib.”