"Wish yer could. I'd laik dat. An' I'd laik de bes' in de wohld ter see my ole mammy ergain. How'd she look, missy?" Jeanne told the girl all that she could recall about Tenny. How she looked and what she had said. Snowball's eyes glistened as she talked. "Yer got a good heart, little missy," she said as Jeanne paused for breath. "You is de bestest lill' lady dat I eber seed. Snowball'll lub ter wait on yer." And Jeanne soon found that it was really a labor of love to the girl, and they grew to be fast friends despite the difference in color and condition. In fact she soon found that she felt more at home with the colored girl than she did with her aunt in spite of the caresses which the latter lavished upon her. The days passed into weeks, and the weeks into months until two had rolled by and Jeanne was still in New Orleans. She had grown pale and thin and worn. She had no illness but suffered the bad effects of the wasting climate. In all the time she had been there no word had come to her from her parents, and a great longing for home possessed her. "Why does not my father write for me?" she murmured one morning as she sat listlessly before the window. "What can have happened? Something is wrong I know, or he would have sent for me." "Why so triste, my love?" asked her aunt entering the room. "Cherie," and Jeanne returned the caress that Madame bestowed upon her. "I am wishing for my mother and home. I wonder why I have not heard from my father." "It is strange," admitted the lady. "And yet, child, when one considers the state of the country and how the Yankees seize mails and telegrams, and exercise such a rigorous espionage over them one cannot wonder after all. I have no doubt that he has written, but that his letters are being detained for some reason by 'Beast' Butler." Jeanne made no reply. She had ceased for some time saying anything when her aunt launched forth in a tirade against the Yankees. She was as staunch a patriot as ever, but, without words, it had been borne in upon her mind that her sentiments were unwelcome to her uncle and aunt, and that it would be better for her not to give utterance to them. "Where is Snowball?" asked Madame Vance presently. "I wish to take you for a drive, and you are not dressed. That darky gets more shiftless every day. Where is she?" "Hyar I is, missus." Snowball started up from behind a huge brocaded chair so quickly that she overturned a low table upon which stood a ewer that had contained orangeade. A crash followed, and the culprit stood looking at the fragments of the pitcher with consternation written over her face. "Come here," and Madame's tone was so stern that Jeanne looked at her startled. "Forty lashes you shall have for this." "Please'm, missus, lemme off dis time. Clar ter goodness I didn't go ter do it."