"I didn't know your trousers were going," Peter suggested, and the Colonel answered curtly, "Who said they were, you blockhead? They are not going unless Ruby gets them in the night. Upon my soul, she is equal to it. I think I shall put them under my pillow. It is Mrs. Amy's dresses I mean. What else is she going to send?" "You remember the doll house you bought her when she was a little girl?" Peter said. "Good thunder, yes! Will she give that away?" the Colonel asked, with something in his tone which was more than surprise. It hurt him that Amy should be willing to part with the doll house. She must be queerer than usual, and he thought of the Harris blood. Suddenly he remembered Mandy Ann and Judy, and asked if she was going to give them to the Rummage. "She means to. Yes, sir. They go with the doll house, one as mistress, the other as maid. I heard her say so. They are downstairs now," was Peter's reply. The Colonel's countenance fell, and there was an awful twinge in his foot, but he didn't mind it. His thoughts flew back to the palmetto clearing, where he first saw the little girl and Judy. Then they travelled on to Savannah and the store where he bought Mandy Ann, and so on through the different phases of Amy's childhood, and he was surprised to find how unwilling he was to part with what had been so intimately associated with years which, on the whole, had been happy, although at times a little stormy. And Amy was going to send them to a Rummage Sale! "I may be a weak old fool, but I won't have them sold down there with quill wheels and warming-pans!" he thought. But what could he do? They were Amy's, and if she had made up her mind to send them, it would take more than his opposition to prevent it. She was very gentle and yielding as a whole, but behind the gentleness and sweetness he knew there was a spirit he did not like to rouse. He must manage some other way. He had told Ruby he would neither give his clothes nor money to the farce, and he prided himself on never going back on his word. But he didn't tell her he wouldn't buy anything, and his face brightened as he said, very briskly, "Peter!" "Yes, sir," was the prompt reply. "Hold your tongue!" "Yes, sir," was Peter's still more prompt reply, and his master continued, "I don't care a rap about those dresses, but I won't have Mandy Ann and the nigger baby and the doll house sold. I may be a hard old cur. I s'pose I am, but I have now and then a streak of,--I don't know what,--clinging to the years of Mrs. Amy's childhood. She turned the house upside down. She raised the very old Harry sometimes, but she got into our hearts somehow, didn't she?" "Yes, a long ways," was Peter's reply, as he waited for what was next to come, and looked curiously at the Colonel, who sat with his eyes closed, clutching the arms of his chair tightly, as if suffering from a fearful twinge.