And I gin her that very afternoon a bran new gingham apron, chocolate and white checks, all made up and trimmed acrost the bottom with as many as seven rows of white braid. And I didn’t give her that apron a thinkin’ it would make up for the loss of her companion—no, indeed! What would store clothes be to me to take the place of my Josiah? But I gin it to her to show my friendliness to her and to show her that I liked her, and to remind her that after she had been tosted and tore by the ragin’ billows she had got into a good harbor now, and a well-meanin’ one. So I gin her the apron. There wuz another family of colored folks who lived pretty nigh to Belle Fanchon, and I got to know considerable about them because they used to come after so many things to my son’s house. Every day they came after milk or buttermilk—one little black face after another did I see there in the kitchen; but they all belonged to the same family, so I wuz told, and seemed to be of all ages between six and twenty. I could see they must take after the Bible some, for all of the children had Skripter names—Silus, and Barnibas, and Elikum, and Jedediah, and St. Luke, and more’n a dozen others, so it seemed to me. Aunt Mela didn’t seem to think much on ’em. She said they wuz “lazy, no account, low-down niggers.” But still, when we hearn that the mother wuz sick (the father wuz always sick, or said he wuz), I went to see her, and see she needed a dress bad—why, Aunt Mela took holt and showed quite a interest in our makin’ it. We bought some good calico, chocolate ground with a red sot flower on it, and got her measure, and then we made it up as quick as we could, for she hadn’t a dress to her back, only the old ragged one that she had on. Wall, we made it the easiest way we could; we started it for a sort of a blouse waist and a skirt, but Aunt Mela told us if we let ’em go that way she never would keep the skirt and waist together—there would always be a strip between ’em, for she wuz too lazy to keep ’em pinned together. So we thought we would put some buttons on to fasten the skirt to the waist, and then we made a belt to go on over it of the same. [Illustration: “DESPATCHED TO GET BUTTERMILK.”] And as we wuz in a hurry, and knew the buttons wouldn’t show under the belt, we used some odd buttons out of Maggie’s button-bag, no two of a size or color, most of ’em pantaloons buttons, but some on ’em red ones, and one or two wuz white. It looked like fury, but we knew the belt would cover it. Wall, we made it, and I carried it down to her and explained the urgent necessity of the belt to her. And the very next day she wore it up to our house on a errant in the mornin’. I happened to be in the kitchen, and when she come in there I see the full row of pantaloons buttons a shinin’ out all round her waist, from the size of a dollar down to a pea. As I looked on it, I know I looked strange. And she asked me anxiously “if I wuz sick?”