The bearer of the note was indeed the ideal mammy, even to the bandanna handkerchief bound about her head, and the capacious waist and ample bosom--the lullaby resting-place for many a child, white and black. I had never seen a real one in the flesh before. I had heard about them in my earlier days. Daddy Billy, my father's body servant and my father's slave, who lived to be ninety-four, had told me of his own Aunt Mirey, who had died in the old days, but too far back for me to remember. And I had listened, when a boy, to the traditions connected with the plantations of my ancestors,--of the Keziahs and Mammy Crouches and Mammy Janes,--but I had never looked into the eyes of one of the old school until I saw Aunt Chloe, nor had I ever fully realized how quaintly courteous and gentle one of them could be until, with an old-time manner, born of a training seldom found outside of the old Southern homes, she bent forward, spread her apron with both hands, and with a little backward dip had said as she left me that first day: "Thank ye, suh! I'll come eve'y Sunday mawnin'. I'll do my best to please ye, an' I specs I kin." I do not often work on Sunday, but my picture had been too long delayed waiting for a faded wedding dress worn once by the original when she was a bride, and which had only been found when two of her descendants had ransacked their respective garrets. "Mus' be mighty driv, suh," she said, "a workin' on de Sabbath day. Golly, but dat's a purty lady!" and she put down her pail. "I see it las' Sunday when I come in, but she didn't had dem ruffles 'round her neck den dat you done gib her. 'Clar' to goodness, dat chile look like she was jes' a-gwine to speak." Aunt Chloe was leaning on her broom, her eyes scrutinizing the portrait. "Well, if dat doan' beat de lan'. I ain't never seen none o' dem frocks since de ole times. An' dem lil low shoes wid de ribbons crossed on de ankles! She's de livin' pussonecation--she is so, for a fac'. Uhm! Uh!" (It is difficult to convey this peculiar sound of complete approval in so many letters.) "Did you ever know anybody like her?" I asked. The old woman straightened her back, and for a moment her eyes looked into mine. I had often tried to draw from her something of her earlier life, but she had always evaded my questions. Marny had told me that his attempts had at first been equally disappointing. "Body as ole's me, suh, seen a plenty o' people." Then her eyes sought the canvas again. After a moment's pause she said, as if to herself: "You's de real quality, chile, dat you is; eve'y spec an' spinch o' ye." I tried again. "Does it look like anybody you ever saw, Aunt Chloe?" "It do an' it don't," she answered critically. "De feet is like hern, but de eyes ain't." "Who?" "Oh, Miss Nannie." And she leaned again on her broom and looked down on the floor.