Courage! courage! Bring in the pitcher and the bowl, Sandy; I need more courage. My doctor is right. The mind is the whole thing. The memory and the imagination can conjure up the few supreme moments of my buried life when she sat beside me and rested over me, looking down into my eyes, as we were stretched at full length beneath the crab-tree blossoms. There is her father’s house upon the hill, a white house with the old balcony porch; there is the row of servants’ quarters, whitewashed in the sunshine, and the little negro children playing under the swaying hollyhocks--and here am I beside her, and she by my side. She wears a blue sun-bonnet, turned back, and a low collar, revealing her soft, delicate neck. Gently she tosses my hair, and smooths my eyebrows with her sensitive fingers. Ah me, my arms yearn forth, and I let my head fall in her lap, and almost--almost fall asleep. “Dearest boy,” she whispers, her lips moistening my ear, and I catch the rare aroma of her hair, “my boy, my boy, the ecstasy ahead of us when I shall hold you close, so close! See the new moon in the day sky, dear? I think of a time when she will shine upon us two together, covering us with silvered light until I might just see you dimly enough to stroke your face. Twelve more moons and the thirteenth we will pledge together, and lie here under our crab-apple tree, you and I alone, you and I and the wind--oh, I mustn’t think of it. Sometimes it makes me almost wild.” Then came the rapids and the whirlpools in the gulf of my development. And I sank. When I came up again, I had lost her. “I can not stand this any longer, Sandy. My thoughts are running away with me. Let us go for a walk. You must always stay with me, Sandy, won’t you? I will leave all my money to you.” “Maarstar, you hab no right to say such things to me. You knows I never did stay wid you for no money. You knows I doan’t reckon ’bout money. I only wants to see you get well, maarstar.” “What is the use of trying to get well, Sandy, when Miss Susanne is gone?” “She not gone, maarstar, no, ’deed, she not gone. Miss Susan’s just a-waitin’ and a-waitin’, an’ you’ll find Miss Susan over yonder, maarstar, you see if you doan’t, and then you hab to say to yerself, Sandy was right all the time. The Bible says so, maarstar, the Bible says so.” XIV Yes, this is a delightful toy-shop. Now we are going by a whole row of Noah’s Arks. I stop to raise the lid on one of them, and there are all the animals. Little Frances, who is holding my hand, notices particularly the giraffe, because he has such a long, spotted neck, and can look down upon the other animals with disdain. I inform her that the giraffe is the only animal that has never been heard to utter a sound. “Isn’t-it-terrible!” says she, in one breath. “No,” I said, “it must be blissful.”