“No, he didn't help, Miss Annie. Ned's been in bed ever since he come back fum town des atter supper. He tol' me des now dat de young man was in a room at de hotel playin' cyards wid some more boys an' he got up an' writ Miss Dolly er note; but Ned went straight to bed when he got home.” “Then, Alan must have got her to meet him at the front gate, don't you reckon? He didn't drive up to the house either, for I think I would have heard the wheels. He must have left his turn-out at the corner.” “Are you a-goin' to set there all night?” thundered the Colonel from his bed. “How do you expect anybody to sleep with that low mumbling going on, like a couple of dogs under the house?” Mrs. Barclay got up, with a soft, startled giggle. “He can' t sleep because he's bothered,” she said, in a confidential undertone. “We'd better go in. I don't want to nag him too far; it's going hard with Dolly as it is. I'm curious to see if he really will refuse to let her come back. Do you reckon he will, Milly?” “I sw'ar I don't know, Miss Annie,” replied the dark human shape from the depths of her blanket. “He sho is a caution, an' you kin see he's tormented. I 'll bet Ned won't have a whole skin in de mornin'.” The Colonel, despite his sullen effort to conceal the fact from his wide-awake wife, slept very little during the remainder of that night, and when he rose at the usual hour he went out to see his horse fed. Mrs. Barclay was fluttering from the dining-room to the kitchen, gossiping with the cook, who had run out of anything to say on the subject and could only grunt, “Yes'um, and no'um,” according to the reply she felt was expected. Aunt Milly was taking a plate of waffles into the dining-room when a little negro boy, about five years of age, the son of the cook at the Alexanders', crawled through a hole in the fence between the two houses and sauntered towards the kitchen. On the door-step he espied a black kitten that took his fancy and he caught it and began to stroke it with his little black hand. “What you want _now?_” Aunt Milly hovered over him like an angry hen. “Want ter borrow suppen, I boun' you; yo'-alls folks is de beatenes' people ter borrow I ever lived alongst.” The boy seemed to have forgotten his errand in his admiration for the kitten. “What you atter now?” snarled Aunt Milly, “eggs, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, flat-iron? Huh, we-all ain't keepin' er sto'.” The boy looked up suddenly and drew his ideas together with a jerk. “Miss Dolly, she say sen 'er Mother Hubbub wrappin' dress, hangin' on de foot er her bed-post.” “What?” gasped Aunt Milly, and, hearing the exclamation, Mrs. Barclay came to the door and paused to listen. “Miss Dolly,” repeated the boy, “she say sen 'er 'er wrappin' dress off'n de foot-post er 'er bed; en, en, she say keep 'er two waffles hot en, en dry--not sobby--en ter git 'er dat fresh cream fer 'er coffee in 'er lill pitcher whut she lef' in de ice-box.”