Some women, when they enter a room, burst in like a child just out of school and overwhelm you with the joyousness of their greetings; others come in without a sound, settle into a seat and regale you in monotones with histories of either the attendant misery or the expected calamity. Aunt Nancy floated in like a bubble blown along a carpet, bringing with her a radiance, a charm, a gentleness, a graciousness of welcome, a gladness at seeing you, so sincere and so heartfelt, that I always felt as if a window had been opened letting in the sunshine and the perfume of flowers. "Oh, my dear Major!" and she held out her hand; that tiny little hand which lace becomes so well, and that always suggests its morning baptism of rose water. Such a dainty white hand! I always bend over and kiss it whenever I have the chance, trying my best to be the gallant I know she would like me to be. After the little ceremony of my salutation was over I handed her to a seat, still holding her finger-tips, bowing low just as her own cavaliers used to do in the days when she had half the County at her feet. I love these make-believe ceremonies when I am with her--and then again I truly think she would not be so happy without them. This over I took my place opposite so I could watch her face and the smiles playing across it--that face which the Colonel always said reminded him of "Summer roses a-bloom in October." We talked of her journey and of how she had stood the cold and how reluctant she had been at first to leave Carter Hall, especially at the Christmas season, and of the Colonel (not a word, of course, about the encounter with Klutchem--no one would have dared breathe a word of that to her), and then of the scrap of a pickaninny she had brought with her. "Isn't he too amusing? I brought him up as much to help dear Chad as for any other reason. But he is incorrigible at times and I fear I shall have to send him back to his mother. I thought the livery might increase his self-respect, but it only seems to have turned his head. He doesn't obey me at all, and is so forgetful. Chad is the only one of whom, I think, he is at all afraid." A knock now sounded in the hall and I could hear the shuffling of Jim's feet, and the swinging back of the door. Then Fitz's card was brought in--not on the silver tray this time, but clutched in the monkey paw of the pickaninny. Aunt Nancy looked at him with a certain well-assumed surprise and drew back from the proffered card. "James, is that the way to bring me a card? Have I not told you often----" The boy looked at her, his face in a tangle of emotions. "De _Pan_! Fo' Gord, Mist'iss, I done forgot dat pan," and with a spring he was out again, returning with Fitz's pasteboard on the silver tray, closely followed by that gentleman himself, who was shaking with laughter over the incident.