The older children, turned over some time ago to the good graces of the second nurse, that “Mammy” might have time to rest, cling about her chair and pull at her skirts, looking with jealous eyes upon the tiny bundle that has usurped the warm nest of her arms, and when at last the little lord consents to sleep, and “Mammy” shoos the flies and draws the bar, the young deposed, of flaxen locks and blue-checked apron, with sleepy eyes borrows the nest a while, regardless of the clamor of the others. “Mammy, tell a tale!” And “Mammy” tells it; day after day she pours out the wealth of her inheritance, as her kindred, the “Mammies” before her, have done, and these children of children’s children listen with the same unfeigned delight. But “Baby” is wearing trousers now—has attained to the dignity of being called by his own name, and “Mammy” is back in her cabin again, that Mecca of childish desire, between which and the “Big House” a path is worn by little pilgrims; for if “Mammy” is ailing there are flannels and loaf-sugar to be brought, and there are always ash-cakes to be baked, sweet-potatoes, goobers, chestnuts, or apples to be roasted by “Mammy’s” hearth, and, if nothing else offers, even plain buttermilk off her deal table, drunk from her cracked blue china bowl, tastes better than any other. Then, after a season, the stone-bruises, stubbed toes, and little cut fingers are gone, and “Mammy’s” roll of old linen, with its familiar turpentine and sugar, are never now disturbed. The bewildering mass of curls that only “Mammy’s” hand could comb without a shower of tears, together with the dainty buttoned pinafores, have faded too, somewhere, for the college days have come and the first love affairs—those strange, all-absorbing passions—and as “Mammy’s” lap, with its smooth white apron and comfortable knees had been the receptacle of all broken dolls and toys, so “Mammy’s” ear is the haven of youthful broken hearts, and the same old stories are tenderly applied for the mending. But time ripens, and the roof-tree is shaken of its fruit. First in joy and first in sorrow, it is “Mammy” who shrouds the form of “Ole Miss,” and now she looks longingly into the past. A few short years that seem as days, and “Little Miss” smoothes the folds of “Mammy’s” black silk, “saved against her burying,” and pins, through blinding tears, a white rose above the still heart, and “Mammy’s” daughter, fat and gentle, with “Mammy’s” own soft, crooning voice, takes up the cradle song. They romped together, these two, beneath the self-same oaks—“Little Miss” and “Mammy’s” daughter—but “Little Miss” now wears a cap (she is “Ole Miss,” too, to some down in the “Quarters”), and the folds of the other’s turban are as full of comfortable dignity as the dusky mother’s were.