of anybody or anything--and that's the boy-twin; 'deed you needn't
tell ME she's only ONE child; no, sir, she's twins, and one of them
got shet up out of sight. Out of sight, but that don't make any
difference, that boy is in there, and you can see him look out of
her eyes when her temper is up."

Then Dorcas went on, in her simple and earnest way, to furnish
illustrations.

"Look at that raven, Marse Tom. Would anybody befriend a raven but
that child? Of course they wouldn't; it ain't natural. Well, the
Injun boy had the raven tied up, and was all the time plaguing it
and starving it, and she pitied the po' thing, and tried to buy it
from the boy, and the tears was in her eyes. That was the girl-
twin, you see. She offered him her thimble, and he flung it down;
she offered him all the doughnuts she had, which was two, and he
flung them down; she offered him half a paper of pins, worth forty
ravens, and he made a mouth at her and jabbed one of them in the
raven's back. That was the limit, you know. It called for the
other twin. Her eyes blazed up, and she jumped for him like a
wild-cat, and when she was done with him she was rags and he wasn't
anything but an allegory. That was most undoubtedly the other
twin, you see, coming to the front. No, sir; don't tell ME he
ain't in there. I've seen him with my own eyes--and plenty of
times, at that."

"Allegory? What is an allegory?"

"I don't know, Marse Tom, it's one of her words; she loves the big
ones, you know, and I pick them up from her; they sound good and I