Holly sat on the back porch, her slippered feet on the topmost step of the flight leading to the “bridge” and from thence to the yard. She wore a simple white dress and dangled a blue-and-white-checked sun-bonnet from the fingers of her right hand. Her left hand was very pleasantly occupied, since its pink palm cradled Holly’s chin. Above the chin Holly’s lips were softly parted, disclosing the tips of three tiny white teeth; above the mouth, Holly’s eyes gazed abstractedly away over the roofs of the buildings in the yard and the cabins behind them, over the tops of the Le Conte pear-trees in the back lot, over the fringe of pines beyond, to where, like a black speck, a buzzard circled and dropped and circled again above a distant hill. I doubt if Holly saw the buzzard. I doubt if she saw anything that you or I could have seen from where she sat. I really don’t know what she did see, for Holly was day-dreaming, an occupation to which she had become somewhat addicted during the last few months.

The mid-morning sunlight shone warmly on the back of the house. Across the bridge, in the kitchen, Aunt Venus was moving slowly about in the preparation of dinner, singing a revival hymn in a clear, sweet falsetto:

To the right, in front of the disused office, a half-naked morsel of light brown humanity was seated in the dirt at the foot of the big sycamore, crooning a funny little accompaniment to his mother’s song, the while he munched happily at a baked sweet potato and played a wonderful game with two spools and a chicken leg. Otherwise the yard was empty of life save for the chickens and guineas and a white cat asleep on the roof of the well-house. Save for Aunt Venus’s chant and Young Tom’s crooning (Young Tom to distinguish him from his father), the morning world was quite silent. The gulf breeze whispered in the trees and scattered the petals of the late roses. A red-bird sang a note from the edge of the grove and was still. Aunt Venus, fat and forty, waddled to the kitchen door, cast a stern glance at Young Tom and a softer one at Holly, and disappeared again, still singing:

Back of Holly the door stood wide open, and at the other end of the broad, cool hall the front portal was no less hospitably placed. And so it was that when the messenger of Fate limped and thumped his way up the steps, crossed the front porch and paused in the hall, Holly heard and leaped to her feet.

“Is anyone at home in this house?” called the messenger.

Holly sped to meet him.

“Good-morning, Uncle Major!”

Major Lucius Quintus Cass changed his cane to his left hand and shook hands with Holly, drawing her to him and placing a resounding kiss on one soft cheek.

“The privilege of old age, my dear,” he said; “one