A dozen little negroes clamor for the lines, and with a friendly nod to them the autocrat of autocrats gives his hand to “Ole Miss,” who is standing at the open door.
“Ole Marse” sits with him in the library below, talking in subdued tones and joining now and again in a familiar julep, brought, at regular intervals, cold and dewy, by the serving man, Cæsar. And “Young Marse,” with his head upon his hand, every nerve strained to its tension, looks idly through the window upon the pulsing life without.
Then a feeble wail sets a pace to hurrying feet and smiling faces as the great bell clangs in the “Quarters” the coming of “Little Marse.”
But hardly second in importance to the arrival of the little lord of the domain is the advent of the Queen of the Nursery, who had been installed from the “Quarters” many days before; for on her capacious bosom the baby head of “Young Marse” had rested, and this, more than likely, is the third generation of her subjects.
The turbaned head is held high and her sway is supreme, for no one can do quite so well for “Baby” when his enemies attack him; her cup and spoon can usually rout the most persistent, and hives and whooping-cough fly ignominiously before her catnip and calimus tea.
The older children, turned over some time ago to the good graces of the second nurse, that “Mammy” might have time to rest, cling about her chair and pull at her skirts, looking with jealous eyes upon the tiny bundle that has usurped the warm nest of her arms, and when at last the little lord consents to sleep, and “Mammy” shoos the flies and draws the bar, the young deposed, of flaxen locks and blue-checked apron, with sleepy eyes borrows the nest a while, regardless of the clamor of the others. “Mammy, tell a tale!”
And “Mammy” tells it; day after day she pours out the wealth of her inheritance, as her kindred, the “Mammies” before her, have done, and these children of children’s children listen with the same unfeigned delight.
But “Baby” is wearing trousers now—has attained to the dignity of being called by his own name, and “Mammy” is back in her cabin again, that Mecca of childish desire, between which and the “Big House” a path is worn by little pilgrims; for if “Mammy” is ailing there are flannels and loaf-sugar to be brought, and there are always ash-cakes to be baked, sweet-potatoes, goobers, chestnuts, or apples to be roasted by “Mammy’s” hearth, and, if nothing else offers, even plain buttermilk off her deal table, drunk from her cracked blue china bowl, tastes better than any other.
Then, after a season, the stone-bruises, stubbed toes, and little cut fingers are gone, and “Mammy’s” roll of old linen, with its familiar turpentine and sugar, are never now disturbed. The bewildering mass of curls that only “Mammy’s” hand could comb without a shower of tears, together with the dainty buttoned pinafores, have faded too, somewhere, for the college days have come and the first love affairs—those strange, all-absorbing passions—and as “Mammy’s” lap, with its smooth white apron and comfortable knees had been the receptacle of all broken dolls and toys, so “Mammy’s” ear is the haven of youthful broken hearts, and the same old stories are tenderly applied for the mending.
But time ripens, and the roof-tree is shaken of its fruit. First in joy and first in sorrow, it is “Mammy” who shrouds the form of “Ole Miss,” and now she looks longingly into the past.