sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and
made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was
thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law
and custom a Negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white
comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the
children apart--little as he had commerce with them--by their clothes;
for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while
the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to
its knees, and no jewelry.

The white child's name was Thomas a Becket Driscoll, the other's name was
Valet de Chambre: no surname--slaves hadn't the privilege. Roxana had
heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear,
and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded it on to her darling.
It soon got shorted to "Chambers," of course.

Wilson knew Roxy by sight, and when the duel of wits begun to play out,
he stepped outside to gather in a record or two. Jasper went to work
energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was observed. Wilson
inspected the children and asked:

"How old are they, Roxy?"

"Bofe de same age, sir--five months. Bawn de fust o' Feb'uary."

"They're handsome little chaps. One's just as handsome as the other,
too."

A delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said: