"'Long when I was a gal," went on the old darkey, as if in pure reminiscence, "an 'oman if she didn't hab 'er fambly to look after, an' was too ole to go cavortin' 'roun', didn't hab nuthin' to do but sit erroun' an' stay in de pa's house or de brother's an' be tookin' cyar of; an' dey'd be wishin' all de time dey'd took dis one or dat one or any one, so's not to come to dis. But laws-a-me! if yuh don't git married nowadays, dyar's a plenty to be a-doin'! Dyar's Miss Robin-- Honey, does yuh ebber specs to be married?" She saw the indignant flash of Frances' eyes, and chuckled inwardly. She wouldn't be crying there long at that rate. The tears were gone now, and soon the marks of them would be. "Does yuh think yuh'd like to git married?" protested the old woman remorselessly, "'cause, if yuh do 'tis time yuh was lookin' aroun'!" "Dyar, ef dat don't fotch her," declared Susan to herself, "nuttin' will!" But it did. Frances sat upright. She had a wholesome respect for matrimony, and the speech had told. "What do you mean?" "Jes' what I says!" calmly. "Dyar's two or three young men Ise got my eye on; some o' dem is mighty nice!" Susan knew, perfectly well, the only matrimonial danger she had ever feared for her darling had passed, but she shouldn't pine for that one, not as long as the old darkey had breath in her body. "I tell yuh, Miss Frances," she said, "I suttenly is sorry fur young gals; dey goes erlong so bright an' so easy, eberything their way, an' when dey runs up all a-sudden on a big wall dat's got 'trouble' writ all ercross it, dey don't know how to get erroun' it nohow. Den, too, it suttenly does seem to me dey has some mighty hard questions to settle when dey know a mighty little, a mighty little." Frances slipped to the side of the bed and put her hand lovingly on the old darkey's knee. "Susan," she said, with a look that told the old darkey how thoroughly understood she was, "you have wasted enough time on me." Susan was instantly conscious and embarrassed. "La, Miss Frances!" "But I sha'n't forget it, nor all the other things--all the other things, you know, since I was so high!" spreading out her hands in a line with the height of the bed. "I 'clar', Miss Frances--" "And now, even if I don't want to get married--" "La! listen to her!" Frances got to her feet briskly, "Bring me some hot water, Susan," she said in her everyday cheerful manner, "and I know you are dying to get to the kitchen." The breach was rebuilt. The bulwark was higher. XX Susan, as she told her troubles for another's healing, thought of them as past and gone. There was a fresh sorrow at her door. She asked for an afternoon's holiday, got it, and went away. She came back, ashy and shaken. "Marse Robert," she told him, soon as he and Frances came in the hall door, "Ise gwine leab yuh." They stood too astonished for speech. "Ise gwine leab yuh!" The old woman steadied herself against the frame of the library door. "Bill--he's come back!"