I took him one side and said, 'Mulberry we can't have them--we've nothing for ourselves--we can't feed them.' He looked at me kind of hurt, and said, 'Turn them out ?--and they've come to me just as confident and trusting as--as--why Polly, I must have bought that confidence sometime or other a long time ago, and given my note, so to speak--you don't get such things as a gift--and how am I going to go back on a debt like that?
And you see, they're so poor, and old, and friendless, and--' But I was ashamed by that time, and shut him off, and somehow felt a new courage in me, and so I said, softly, 'We'll keep them--the Lord will provide.' He was glad, and started to blurt out one of those over-confident speeches of his, but checked himself in time, and said humbly, 'I will, anyway.' It was years and years and years ago.

Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet." "But don't they do your housework ?" "Laws! The idea.

They would if they could, poor old things, and perhaps they think they do do some of it.

But it's a superstition.

Dan'l waits on the front door, and sometimes goes on an errand; and sometimes you'll see one or both of them letting on to dust around in here--but that's because there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabble into.