Congo was tied up, and Mike and Mrs.Drane and Cicely, and finally La Fleur, came to look at him and to speak well of him.

When all had gone away but the colored man and the cook, the latter asked why Miss Bannister had been mentioned in connection with this dog.
"'Cause he was her dog," said Mike.

"She got him when he was a little puppy no bigger nor a cat, an' you'd a thought, to see her carry him about an' put him in a little bed an' kiver him up o' night an' talk to him like a human bein', that she loved him as much as if he'd been a little baby brother; an' she's thought all the world of him, straight 'long until now, an' she's gone an' give him to Mr.Hav'ley." La Fleur reflected for a moment.
"Are you sure, Mike," she asked, "that they are not engaged ?" "I'm dead sartain sure of it," he said.

"His sister told me so with her own lips.

Givin' dogs don't mean nothin', Mrs.Flower.If people married all the people they give dogs to, there'd be an awful mix in this world.
Bless my soul, I'd have about eight wives my own self." La Fleur smiled at Mike's philosophy, and applied his information to the comfort of her mind.
"If his sister says they are not engaged," she thought, "it's like they are not, but it looks to me as if it were time to take the Bannister pot off the fire." La Fleur now retired to a seat under a tree near the kitchen door, and applied her intellect to the consideration of the dinner, and the future of the Drane family and herself.