You said that if my heart was old and tired she would refresh it, and you said truly. I do not know how I got along without her, before. I was a forlorn old tree, but now that this blossoming vine has wound itself about me and become the life of my life, it is very different. As a furnisher of business for me and for Mammy Dorcas she is exhaustlessly competent, but I like my share of it and of course Dorcas likes hers, for Dorcas “raised” George, and Cathy is George over again in so many ways that she brings back Dorcas’s youth and the joys of that long-vanished time. My father tried to set Dorcas free twenty years ago, when we still lived in Virginia, but without success; she considered herself a member of the family, and wouldn’t go. And so, a member of the family she remained, and has held that position unchallenged ever since, and holds it now; for when my mother sent her here from San Bernardino when we learned that Cathy was coming, she only changed from one division of the family to the other. She has the warm heart of her race, and its lavish affections, and when Cathy arrived the pair were mother and child in five minutes, and that is what they are to date and will continue. Dorcas really thinks she raised George, and that is one of her prides, but perhaps it was a mutual raising, for their ages were the same—thirteen years short of mine. But they were playmates, at any rate; as regards that, there is no room for dispute. Cathy thinks Dorcas is the best Catholic in America except herself. She could not pay any one a higher compliment than that, and Dorcas could not receive one that would please her better. Dorcas is satisfied that there has never been a more wonderful child than Cathy. She has conceived the curious idea that Cathy is _twins_, and that one of them is a boy-twin and failed to get segregated—got submerged, is the idea. To argue with her that this is nonsense is a waste of breath—her mind is made up, and arguments do not affect it. She says: “Look at her; she loves dolls, and girl-plays, and everything a girl loves, and she’s gentle and sweet, and ain’t cruel to dumb brutes—now that’s the girl-twin, but she loves boy-plays, and drums and fifes and soldiering, and rough-riding, and ain’t afraid of anybody or anything—and that’s the boy-twin; ’deed you needn’t tell _me_ she’s only _one_ child; no, sir, she’s twins, and one of them got shet up out of sight. Out of sight, but that don’t make any difference, that boy is in there, and you can see him look out of her eyes when her temper is up.” Then Dorcas went on, in her simple and earnest way, to furnish illustrations.