She went among all the tradespeople, and named prices to them which we were to pay if they obtained our valuable patronage. One little man who kept a sort of general store was so impressed by her manner and the awful lies she told about the grandeur of her employers that he presented her with a pitcher in the shape of the figure of Napoleon. Something so very absurd happened in connection with this pitcher some three years later that I particularly remembered the time she got it, and the little man who gave it to her. She kept house for seven years in Paris, which explains her reverence for food, for we have discovered that the only way to dispose of things is to eat them. Otherwise, in different guises, they return to us until in desperation the Angel sprinkles cigar-ashes over what is left. She pays all the bills and contests her rights to the last penny, once keeping the baker out of his whole bill for five months because he would not recognize her claim for a receipted bill for eight cents which she had paid at the door. As to her relation to us in a social way, those of you who have lived in the South will understand her privileges, when I say that she is a white "Mammy." Her dear old heart is pure gold, and such her quick sympathy that if I want to cry I have to lock myself in my room where she won't see me, for if she sees tears in my eyes she comes and puts her arms around me and weeps, too, without even knowing why, but just with the heavenly pity of one of God's own, although before her eyes are dry she may be damning the butcher in language which curdles the blood. She abhors profanity, and never mingles holy names in her sentences which contain fluent d's, but being an excellent Catholic enables her to accentuate her remarks with exclamations which she says are prayers; and as these are never denunciatory her theory is most conscientiously lived up to. In our first housekeeping, our rawness in all matters practical wrung Mary's heart. She had grown up from a slip of a girl in the employ of one family, and ours was only her second experiment in "living out." As her first employers were people of wealth and with half-grown grandchildren when their magnificent home was finally broken up, you can imagine the change to Mary of living with newly married people, engaged in their first struggle with the world. But ours was just the problem which appealed to the motherly heart of our spinster Mary, for she yearned over us with an exceeding great yearning, and of her value to us you yourselves shall be the judge.