“Please, missy, what is it mannehs foh Lucy to call you? Ol’ Miss is Ol’ Miss and Lil’ Miss is Lil’ Miss, and Miss Harriot is Miss Harry, but foh a fac’ I don’t know what yoh is, and I been a studyin’ about it a heap.” “I’m Miss Dorothea, I suppose,” Dorothea suggested. Lucy shook her head. “That’s a high bo’n quality name,” she replied doubtfully, “but they ain’t none of us can say it lak it should be said. I laid awake half the night a-practicin’ and a-practicin’, an’ I ain’t got up the courage yet. It’s too much granjure for my tongue, I reckon.” “What would you like to call me?” Dorothea questioned. “I should like you to call me whatever you please.” Lucy heaved a great sigh of relief. “Then I’ll say Miss Dee, honey,” she announced, “jes’ lak I’d knowed yoh f’om a baby.” She stopped and Dorothea expected her to go away, but she still lingered. “Is there something more, Lucy?” she asked. “Yes’m, Miss Dee, there is,” the girl confessed with marked hesitation, but in a moment it came out with a rush. “Miss Dee, is you-all some sort of a Yankee?” “No, not any kind,” Dorothea answered with a smile. “My mother was your Old Miss’s sister, but my father is a Scot and we live in England, or at least we have always called England our home.” Lucy was evidently disappointed. “Then you can’t tell me what the Yankees is gwine to do with we-all when we’s free,” she murmured half to herself. Dorothea shook her head. “The North has first to win the war, Lucy,” she answered. “If they do, you will have to take care of yourselves and earn your own livings like white people, I suppose.” “An’ how’s we-all gwine to do that without any white-folks learnin’?” demanded the girl. “Oh, you could do it by taking care of some one as you do of me,” Dorothea explained. Lucy’s eyes widened. “Do they pay real money up No’th just for brushin’ hair and foldin’ up youh pretties?” she asked excitedly. “An’ could I be free too? But I guess you must mean Confedrit money, Miss Dee. You don’t know there’s a sayin’ that a whole bahrel full of it won’t pay foh the bunghole.” “My father pays a maid at home to take care of me,” Dorothea pointed out, with a laugh. “But I don’t think she’s any better off than you are.” “That’s what Merry’s always a-sayin’,” Lucy agreed. “I would be quite satisfied if I were you,” said Dorothea. “You are as comfortable now as you are ever likely to be.” “Yes’m, that’s what I think—but what’s I gwine to do if some of ’em meddlin’ Yankees come along and set me free? That’s what I’m askin’ yoh.” Lucy was still grumbling to herself as she moved out of the room. Dorothea watched her go, realizing another of the problems of the South for the first time, and getting a hint of the state of mind of the slaves, who had so vague an idea of what their future was to be.