The glass door led by a flight of steps down to the flower garden. Deb came up the steps and into the library. "Kiss me good-night, Uncle Edward. It's mos' seven o'clock. I've had my supper at the Quarter with Aunt Daphne. The scarlet beans over her door are in bloom, and Uncle Mingo told me about the rabbit and the fox. Miranda is going to put me to bed because Mammy Chloe is busy in the blue room with the doctor and the man whose horse threw him." Uncle Edward put his one arm around the child and drew her close to his chair. Deb touched with her brown fingers the sleeve that was pinned across his coat. "Does your arm that is buried at Yorktown hurt you to-day, Uncle Edward? Tell me a story about General Washington." "No; you tell me a story." Deb considered. "I'll tell you a story about the man upstairs in the blue room." "What do you know about the man in the blue room?" "Jacqueline told me. She knows," answered Deb. "I am going to begin now, Uncle Edward." "I am listening," said the Major. "Once upon a time there lived on the Three-Notched Road a boy, a poor boy. He lived in a log house that was not so good as an overseer's house, and there were pine trees all around it, and wild flowers, but no other kinds of flowers. And in the trees there were owls, and in the bushes there were whip-poor-wills, and sometimes a mockingbird, but no other kinds of birds, and at night the fireflies were all about. And outside the pine trees, all around the house, the tobacco grew and grew. It grew so broad and high that the children might have played I-spy in it,--only there weren't any children. There was only the boy, and he hated tobacco. He was poor, and his father was a hard man. He had no time to play or to learn--he worked all day in the fields like a hand. He had to work like the men at the lower Quarter, like Domingo and Cato and Indian Jim. He worked all the time. I never saw the sun get up, but he saw it every day. In the long afternoons when it was hot, and we make the rooms cool and dark, and rest with a book, he was working, working like a friendless slave. And at night, when the moon rises, and we sit and watch it, and wonder, and remember all the battles that were ever won and lost, and all the songs that ever were sung, he could only stumble to his own poor corner, and sleep, and sleep, with a hot and heavy heart, and the blisters on his poor, poor hands!" Major Churchill sank back in his chair and stared at his niece. "Good God, child! whose words are you using?" "Jacqueline's," answered Deb, staring in her turn. "Jacqueline told it to me just that way, one hot night when I could not sleep, and there was heat lightning, and she took me in her lap and we sat by the window. Are you tired, Uncle Edward? Does your arm hurt? Suppose I finish the story to-morrow?" "No, I'm not tired," said Uncle Edward. "Finish it now."