“Well.—Perhaps—but I doubt if you are used to these.”
Mrs. Graeme soon discovered her mistake. One after another was tried and discarded. Those who knew nothing remained until they had learned enough to be useful and then departed, while those who knew a little thought they knew everything and brooked no direction. And all were insolent. With or without notice the dusky procession passed through the house, each out-goer taking with her some memento of her transient stay.
“I do not know what is the matter,” sighed Mrs. Graeme. “I always thought I could get along with colored people; but somehow these are different. Why is it, Cabell!”
“Spoiled,” said her husband, laconically. “The mistake was in the emancipation proclamation. Domestic servants ought to have been excepted.”
His humor, however, did not appeal to his wife. The case was too serious.
“The last one I had told me, that if I did not like what she called coffee—and which I really thought was tea—I 'd better cook for myself. And that other maid, after wearing one of my best dresses, walked off with a brand-new waist. I am only standing the present one till Mammy comes. She says she likes to be called 'Miss Johnson.'”
“I paid twenty dollars last week for the privilege of chucking a dusky gentleman down the steps; but I did not begrudge it,” said her husband, cheerfully. “The justice who imposed the fine said to me afterward that the only mistake I had made was in not breaking his neck.”
At last, old Caesar was gathered to his dusky fathers, and the chickens having been mainly disposed of, Mr. Graeme went down and brought the old mammy on.
He had written the old woman to come by a certain train to Washington where he would meet her, and true to his appointment he met that train. But in the motley throng that filed through the gate was no Mam' Lyddy, and inquiring of the train men showed that no one answering to her description could have been on the train.