Not many days thereafter I got a request to ship my “Dead Hopes,” at my price, to the address of a frame-maker in New York. Elaine's father said that he had a purchaser for it. I discovered later that he was a master of pleasant fiction.
When I wondered, long after, to him that he should have bought a Confederate picture, he convinced me that my picture had nothing confederate in it; that he had inferred that I had painted it in a catholic spirit. The lady was in mourning, the flowers faded, the letters too small for postmark, the picture on the wall a colorless photograph, and the sword a regulation pattern common to both armies. He thought it very skilfully planned, and complimented me on it. I was silent. All the Confederate part and point had been in my mind.
About a year after this—I had been located in New York some months—Elaine and I came on a visit to Richmond. I might just as well say that it was our bridal trip.
We looked up Mammy in her comfortable quarters. She had been well provided for. There was some little confusion in her mind at first as to who Elaine was, but on being made to understand, called down fervent blessings upon her head.
“Now the old lady kin go happy. I always said that I had nussed Mahs William, an' of I jess could live long 'nuff to—”
Elaine cut in rather abruptly, I thought.
“Why, Mammy, what a beautiful vine you have on your stoop!”
“What's stoop, honey? Dat's a poach.”
Mammy lived some years longer, aging comfortably, and unvexed by any question of fractions. She died a serene integer, with such comfortable assurance of just valuation as is denied most of us, and contented that it should be expressed in terms that were, to her, the only sure criterion applicable to her race.