And aunt Jemima suddenly threw her blue-checked cotton apron over her head, and burst into a tumult of passionate tears. “I wisht,” she exclaimed—wicked old soul!—“thar warn’t no sech thing ez right an’ wrong! But I don’t keer fur right. An’ I don’t keer fur wrong. They shan’t take my child away from hyar.” Although it wrung their hearts they decided to relinquish their household treasure. But they temporized as well as their scanty tact would enable them. A message was sent to old Mrs. Peters, coupled with an invitation to come and make them a visit. And thus they eked out the weeks. One day—a day of doom it seemed to them—there rode up to the door a small wizened old woman, sharp-eyed, with a high voice and a keen tongue; she was riding a white mare with a colt at her heels. She scarcely seemed perturbed by Rosamond’s reluctance to recognize her. The alert eyes took in first with an amazed stare the child’s cleanly and whole attire, her delicately tended flowing hair, her fine, full, glowing look of health; then with more furtive glances she expended what capacity for astonishment remained to her on the scoured puncheon floor, the neat women and men, the loom, with a great roll of woven cloth of many yards hanging to it; the evidences of a carefully adjusted domestic routine, of thrift and decorum and moral worth; the cooking and quality of the meal presently set forth on the table. She had not lived so long in this world to be unable to recognize sterling people when she met them. They all talked on indifferent topics for a time. But presently she broke forth. “I dunno ez I oughter up an’ remark it so flat-footed—but I never expected ter find Jerry Binwell’s friends sech ez you-uns. I wouldn’t hev rid my mare’s back sore ef I hed. I dunno ez I’d hev kem at all.” “Waal,” said Hiram Guyther, “I reckon ’twar leetle Rosamondy ez jes’ tangled herself up in our heart-strings—an’ that made us put up with Jerry. We ’lowed he war her dad.” “I’m powerful glad he ain’t!” said Abner. “I say!” cried the sharp little woman scornfully. “_Her dad_ war a mighty solid, ’sponsible, ’spectable young man, an’ good-lookin’ till you couldn’t rest! He’d hev lived till he war eighty ef his gun hedn’t bust an’ killed him. I dunno what ailed Em’line ter marry sech ez Jerry arterward. He made way with everything her fust husband lef’ her, an’ mighty nigh all I hed, ’mongst his evil frien’s an’ drinkin’. But he always war mighty good ter Rosamondy. I’ll gin him that credit.” “Ennybody would be good ter sech a child ez Rosamondy!” cried aunt Jemima. “Waal, we war all frien’s ter Jerry, ez fur ez he’d let us be, an’ ter the leetle gal,” said Hiram, solidly, “an’ I hope, mum, ye’ll let her spen’ cornsider’ble of her time with us.” This was the cautious way it began, although it fired aunt Jemima’s blood to hear the permission humbly craved instead of claimed as a right.