"Ma'am? What you say, missy? De cats? Why, honey, dey welcome to come an' go. I des picked 'em up here an' dar 'caze dey was whinin'. Any breathin' thing dat I sees dat's poorer 'n what I is, why, I fetches 'em out once-t, an' dey mos' gin'ally stays. "But if you yo'ng ladies 'll come out d'reckly after Easter Sunday, when I got my pervisions in, why I'll show you how de ladies intertain dey company in de old days when Gin'ral Jackson used ter po' de wine." Needless to say, there was such a birthday party as had never before been known in the little shanty on the Easter following the visit of the three little maids of the King's Daughters. When Old Easter had finished her duties as hostess, sharing her good things equally with those who sat at her little table and those who squatted in an outer circle on the floor, she remarked that it carried her away back to old times when she stood behind the governor's chair "while he h'isted his wineglass an' drink ter de ladies' side curls." And Crazy Jake said yes, he remembered, too. And then he began to nod, while blind Pete remarked, "To my eyes de purtiest thing about de whole birfday party is de bo'quet o' Easter lilies in de middle o' de table." SAINT IDYL'S LIGHT SAINT IDYL'S LIGHT You would never have guessed that her name was Idyl--the slender, angular little girl of thirteen years who stood in her faded gown of checkered homespun on the brow of the Mississippi River. And fancy a saint balancing a bucket of water on top of her head! Yet, as she puts the pail down beside her, the evening sun gleaming through her fair hair seems to transform it into a halo, as some one speaks her name, "Saint Idyl." Her thin, little ears, sun-filled as she stands, are crimson disks; and the outlines of her upper arms, dimly seen through the flimsy sleeves, are as meagre as are the ankles above her bare, slim feet. The appellation "Saint Idyl," given first in playful derision, might have been long ago forgotten but for the incident which this story records. It was three years before, when the plantation children, colored and white together, had been saying, as is a fashion with them, what they would like to be. One had chosen a "blue-eyed lady wid flounces and a pink fan," another a "fine white 'oman wid long black curls an' ear-rings," and a third would have been "a hoop-skirted lady wid a tall hat." It was then that Idyl, the only white child of the group--the adopted orphan of the overseer's family--had said: "I'd choose to be a saint, like the one in the glass winder in the church, with light shinin' from my head. I'd walk all night up and down the 'road bend,' so travellers could see the way and wagons wouldn't get stallded." The children had shuddered and felt half afraid at this. "But you'd git stallded yo'se'f in dat black mud--" "An' de runaways in de canebrake 'd ketch yer--" "An' de paterole'd shoot yer--" "An' eve'body'd think you was a walkin' sperit, an' run away f'om yer."