“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” said her mistress, easily. “_This_ one,” again indicating Roden, “’s goin’ in fur horse-racin’. Some of his horses’s comin’ day after to-morrer. That’s better’n Herefordshire cattle, ain’t it?” “Co’se _you_ think so,” said Aunt Tishy, with something between a sniff and a grunt, as she settled herself in the chimney-corner with a basket of darning, and fell to work, stretching the stockings to be mended over a little gourd. “Why, Aunt Tishy?” said Roden, beginning to feel as though he were a character in a book, and might spoil the plot by saying the wrong thing. The old negress looked up at him over her big gold-rimmed spectacles, with her great underlip pushed out, showing its pale yellowish lining. “Lor’! sur,” she said, “Miss Faginny’s plum crazy ’bout horses. Ev’ybody on de place’ll tell you dat. I alwuz hol’s as how somebody done cunjur her mar ’fo’ she was bown. Dat’s why she so run made ’bout horses. Somebody sutny _is_ cunjur Miss Faginny. I’ll say dat with my last bref!” “Oh, shut up, mammy!” here interpolated Virginia. “I sutny will,” reiterated the old black. “Cert’n’y will what?” said Miss Herrick; “shut up? I’m sure I hope so, and I know Mr. Roden does.” She rose and put down the raccoon, who immediately clambered up to the carven top of an old oak press close by, and hung there, smiling genially. Virginia busied herself in getting out her spinning-wheel and winding the distaff with blue wool. As she sat down to her spinning, with her closely plaited fair hair falling into her lap, a novel thought suggested itself to Roden, namely, that this blond maiden might be a Desdemona dressed up as Marguerite, with the Moor concealed as her nurse. He watched with a strange sensation of unreality the whirring wooden wheel, the soft falling of the blue thread upon the floor, the dusky smoke-stained rafters of the room, wherefrom hung strings of onions and red peppers in gay festoons; the old negress, wrinkled as to her black face with busy absorption; the moving of the different creatures in the sombre depths of shadow. Now it was the glint of the corn-crake’s flame-like crest as he thrust an inquisitive head from his position on a shelf over the mantle. Now the white gleam of the raccoon’s sharp teeth as he grinned with an amiable persistency upon the room and its inmates. Now the old hounds grumbled uneasily in their sleep, or the Persian cats leaned against his legs with luxurious, undulating appeals to be caressed. “Why don’ yo’ sing, honey?” said Aunt Tishy; “yo’ know yo’ kyarn’ harf wuk ef yo’ don’ sing.” “Yes, do sing, Miss Virginia,” said Roden. “A nig--I mean a darky song,” he added, quickly. “What shall I sing, mammy?” questioned she. “Dat ’pen’s on whut kinder song de gen’leman wants.” “Well, what kind do you want?” she asked him. “Something characteristic,” he replied. Thus adjured, she sang to him, in a very rich contralto voice, the following ditty: