As he did not reply, she hesitated an instant and over her features, which looked as if they had been flattened by a blow, there came an expression which was half scornful, half inviting, yet so little personal that it might have been worn by one of her treetop ancestors while he looked down from his sheltering boughs on a superior species of the jungle. The chance effect of light and shadow on a grey rock was hardly less human or more primitive. "I'se gittin' moughty well along, Marster," she said; "I reckon I'se gittin' on toward a hunnard." "Nonsense, Mandy, you ain't a day over thirty-five. There's a plenty of life left in you yet." "Go way f'om yer, Marster; you knows I'se a heap older 'n dat. How long ago was hit I done fust come yer ter you all?" He thought a moment. A question of calculation always interested him, and he prided himself on his fine memory for dates. "You came the year our son Henry died, didn't you? That was in '66--eighteen years ago. Why, you couldn't have been over fifteen that summer." For the first time a look of cunning--of the pathetic cunning of a child pitted against a man--awoke in her face. "En Miss Lindy sent me off befo' de year was up, Marster. My boy Jubal was born de mont' atter she done tu'n me out." She hesitated a minute, and then added, with a kind of savage coquetry, "I 'uz a moughty likely gal, Marster. You ain't done furgit dat, is you?" Her words touched Cyrus like the flick of a whip on a sore, and he drew back quickly while his thin lips grew tight. "You'd better take that basket into the house," he said sharply. In the negress's face an expression of surprise wavered for a second and then disappeared. Her features resumed their usual passive and humble look--a look which said, if Cyrus could have read human nature as easily as he read finance, "I don't understand, but I submit without understanding. Am I not what you have made me? Have I not been what you wanted? And yet you despise me for being the thing you made." "I didn't mean nuttin', Marster. I didn't mean nuttin'," she protested aloud. "Then get into the house," retorted Cyrus harshly, "and don't stand gaping there. Any more of your insolence and I'll never let you set foot in this yard again." "'Fo' de Lawd, I didn't mean nuttin'! Gawd a' moughty, I didn't mean nuttin'! I jes lowed as you mought be willin' ter gun me fo' dollars a mont' fur de washin'. My boy Jubal----" "I'll not give you a red cent more. If you don't want it, you can leave it. Get out of here!"