“I’ll wait on _you_,” she said, in a smothered voice--“I say I’ll wait on _you_, _but I won’t wait on her_.” She dashed down his napkin, which she had lifted from the floor, and strode with her swift, noiseless movements to the door. “Virginia!” said Roden, aghast--“Virginia!” “I don’t care!” cried the girl, passionately, swinging open the heavy door--“I don’t care! I ain’t anybody’s nigger!” She rushed out tempestuously, dragging from one or two rings the heavy portière, which with a native incongruity hung before the door itself. “How vulgarity will crop out!” said Roden, rising to shut the door. “That poor little girl has behaved so well until to-day!” That evening, as he sat writing in a little room opening into the dining-room, Virginia entered, and came and stood beside him. He did not look up. She had annoyed him a good deal, and he was not prepared to yield the forgiveness for which he felt she had come to plead. She stood there some moments quite silent, then reached over his shoulder and dropped something on the table before him. “You said th’ other day you wanted one for the silver. There ’tis,” she said. She turned before he could speak, and left the room. Lifting the crimson mass from the table, he saw that it was an old-fashioned purse of netted silk, secured by little steel rings. He recalled a speech which he had made a day or two ago concerning the inconvenience of modern purses as regarded silver currency. He started up and opened the door, calling the girl by name two or three times. No one answered, and he went down the hall and into Herrick’s room. The overseer was there, whittling something by the light of a smoking kerosene lamp. Aunt Tishy was there, grumbling to herself about “folks cuttin’ trash all over de flo’ fur her ter break her pore ole back over.” The raccoon was very much there, as he seemed to be having a fit just as Roden entered. But there was no Virginia. Her spinning-wheel stood idle in its corner; her heavy boots were drying in front of the wood fire; there was a book, face down, upon the deal table--a book which she must have been reading, as no one else at Caryston besides Roden ever glanced between the covers of one. He lifted it, expecting to find some Dora-Thornesque romance of high life. It was a condensed copy of “Youatt on the Horse,” and beneath it was a racing calendar for ’79. Alas! alas! even this discovery told nothing else to this otherwise discerning young man. He smiled as he put down the volumes, thinking that the little Virginian was bent on making him acknowledge her a superior horsewoman in all respects. He then inquired of Herrick as to the whereabouts of Virginia. Neither the girl’s father nor Aunt Tishy could tell him. “If you’ll lend me a pencil I’ll just leave a note for her,” he said, feeling instinctively that she would not care to have a message in regard to her little gift left with her father or the old negress.