After glancing through my open door to assure myself that I had not made a mistake, I stole across the hall and hesitated before the threshold of what Mrs. Blanton had pointed out to me as “the spare room.” If the child were sleeping, I did not wish to arouse him, but all idea that he slept was banished as I pushed the door wider and heard him talking aloud to himself. Then, while the pointed flame of my candle pierced the obscurity, I saw that he was not, as I had first thought, alone. The old coloured woman in the black alpaca dress, with the white apron and the red turban, was bending over him. When I approached she turned slowly and looked at me; and I felt that her dark, compassionate face was love made manifest to my eyes. So she had looked down on the child, and so, for one miraculous instant, she gazed directly into my heart. For one miraculous instant! Then, while I stood there, transfixed as by an arrow, she passed, with that slow movement, across the room to the door which I had left open. Before I could stir, before I could utter a word to detain her, she had disappeared; and the boy, sitting up in the heavily draped bed, was staring at me with wondering eyes. “Mammy was telling me a story,” he said. “I didn’t know that you had a mammy now.” This was the best that I could do at the moment. “Oh, yes, I have!” He smiled with charming archness, and I noticed that the fear had passed out of his voice. “When did she come?” I asked. “She has been here always, ever since,” he hesitated, “since before I was.” “Does she look after the other children too?” He laughed, cuddling down into the middle of the feather bed. “They don’t know about her. They have never seen her.” “But how can she come and go in the house without anybody seeing her?” At this the laughter stopped. “She has a way,” he answered enigmatically. “She never comes into the house except when I’m afraid.” I bent over and kissed him. “Well, you’re not frightened any longer?” “Oh, no. I’m all right now,” he replied, stroking my hand. “The next time it gets dark Mammy says she will come back and finish her story.” “And I am next door,” I said. “Whenever you begin to feel frightened you can come and sleep on the big couch by the window.” “By the window,” he repeated eagerly, “where Mammy’s wrens are under the eaves. That would be fun.” Then, as I arranged the bedclothes over him, he turned his cheek to the pillow, and settled himself for the night. A moment later, when I went out of the room, I began wondering again about the old negress. Was she a faithful servant who had sacrificed her superstition to her affection for Clarissa’s child, and had stayed on at Whispering Leaves when the other negroes had gone away? In the morning I would make some inquiries. Meanwhile I liked to remember the glory—there is no other word to describe it—that I had seen in her dark face when she bent over the boy.