“Oh, dat’s no ’count room; jes’ put folks in thar when they fust comes, then moves ’em up higher, like they does in Scripter. Marster’s mighty quare.” “How long have you lived with him?” Edna asked, and Becky replied: “Oh, many years. I was a slave on the block, in Car’lina, and Marster Phil comed in and seen me, and pitied me like, and bid me off, and kep’ me from gwine South with a trader, an’ brought me home and sot me free, and I’ve lived with him ever since, an’, please Heaven, I will sarve him till I die, for all he’s done for me. Is you gwine to stay, Miss Overton?” Edna told her that she was, and that she was sure she should like it very much if she could get something to do. “You likes to work then, and so did Miss Maude, though she ’pears more of a lady than ’nough I’ve seen what wouldn’t lift thar finger to fotch a thing,” Becky said, and Edna asked: “Who is Maude? Uncle Phil has spoken of her once or twice.” “Why she’s Maude Somerton, from New York,” Becky replied; “and she came fust to Prospect Cottage, as they call a house way up on the hills whar the city gentry sometimes stay summers for a spell, and whar Miss Maude’s Aunt Burton was onct with her daughter called Georgie, though she was a girl.” Edna was interested now, and moved a little nearer to Becky, who continued: “I know precious little ’bout them Burtons, only they was mighty big feelin’, and Miss Maude was a kind of poor relation, I s’pects; leastwise she wanted to teach school, and Uncle Phil was committee-man and let her have it, and she was to board round, and didn’t like it, and went at Marster Phil till he took her in, though he hated to like pison, and it was allus a mystery to me how she did it, for he don’t hanker after wimmen much, and never could bar to have ’em ’round.”