The infant progeny of "Mammy Judy," an old nurse, made this a hiding-place from domestic justice, where they were eventually betrayed by subterranean giggling that had once or twice brought bashful confusion to the hearts of Miss Sally's admirers, and mischievous security to that finished coquette herself.
It was a pleasant September afternoon, on possibly one of these occasions, that Miss Sally, sitting before the piano, alternately striking a few notes with three pink fingers and glancing at her reflection in the polished rosewood surface of the lifted keyboard case, was heard to utter this languid protest:-- "Quit that kind of talk, Chet, unless you just admire to have every word of it repeated all over the county.

Those little niggers of Mammy Judy's are lying round somewhere and are mighty 'cute, and sassy, I tell you.
It's nothin' to ME, sure, but Miss Hilda mightn't like to hear of it.

So soon after your particular attention to her at last night's pawty too." Here a fresh-looking young fellow of six-and-twenty, leaning uneasily over the piano from the opposite side, was heard to murmur that he didn't care what Miss Hilda heard, nor the whole world, for the matter of that.

"But," he added, with a faint smile, "folks allow that you know how to PLAY UP sometimes, and put on the loud pedal, when you don't want Mammy's niggers to hear." "Indeed," said the young lady demurely.

"Like this ?" She put out a distracting little foot, clothed in the white stocking and cool black prunella slipper then de rigueur in the State, and, pressing it on the pedal, began to drum vigorously on the keys.