Nor in stuffed larder alone were discernible the signs of the approaching festival. Christmas was in the very air. Old Dick’s mien grew hourly more imposing; his eye, beneath which now trembled no longer Zip alone, but Zip reinforced by double his own strength, hourly more severe. Aunt Phœbe, her head gorgeous in a new bandanna (a present from Mrs. Carter last Christmas, but which had lain folded in her “chist” for the past year),—Aunt Phœbe, chief of the female cohort, and champion pastry-cook of the county, waddled from room to room,—serene, kindly, and puffing,—voluminous with her two hundred pounds, inspecting the work of her subordinates, and giving a finishing touch here and there. Polly, the cook, and her scullion, alone of the household, had no leisure for putting on the Christmas look, busy as they were getting dinner for the coming guests; cooks being, in point of fact, among the few people, white or black, that ever did a full day’s work in Virginia in the olden time. But we have changed all that,—so let it pass. “Dey comin’!” eagerly cried an urchin of color, who, with twenty companions of both sexes, had had for the past hour their eyes fixed on the lane-gate. The gate was swinging on its hinges. With one accord they all assumed the attitude of runners awaiting the signal to start. With feet planted firmly,—shall I say widely?—but no, they are men and brothers now,—with eyes bent upon the gate, but bodies leaning towards the house, they stood for a moment expectant. The noses of a pair of horses appeared between the gate-posts. “D’yar dey come! D’yar dey come!” they shouted in chorus; and, with quasi-plantigrade flap of simultaneous feet, they bounded to the rear. As when Zeus, angry because of the forgotten hecatomb, sends forth, in black, jagged cloud, the glomerated hail, and lays low the labors of the oxen and the hopes of the husbandman. Or, just as a herd of buffaloes, sniffing the band of Redmen from afar, scurry over the plain. As though a pack of village curs have inaugurated a conflict, at dead of night, in peaceful, moonlit lane. The combat deepens and stayeth not. But the Summer Boarder, wild with the irony of advertisements, discharges in their midst the casual blunderbuss,—rusty, ineffectual. Instantly hushed is the voice of battle; but multitudinous is the rush of departing paws. Not otherwise scampered over the Elmington lawn, with nimbly flapping feet, the children of the blameless Ethiopians, as Homer calls them. The swiftest (for the race is not always to the slow) was first to reach the front steps. “Dey comin’, Uncle Dick! D’yar dey is in de fur eend o’ de lane!” For that worthy, hearing their hurrying steps, had made his way to the porch, followed by Zip. Zip started back through the door on hearing the tidings. “Whar you gwine, boy?” Zip stood as though frozen. “Ain’t you never gwine to learn no sense? Don’t you know I is de properest pusson to renounce de rerival o’ de company?”