reached out its hand, saying, "Dear Willie, you'll love me a little,
won't you?"

"Yes, if you are good to me," was the answer, which made the new
stepmother mentally exclaim, "A young rebel, I know," while Lenora,
bending between the two, whispered emphatically:

"She _shall_ be good to you!"

And soon, in due order, the servants were presented to their new
mistress. Some were disposed to like her, others eyed her askance, and
old Polly Pepper, the black cook, who had been in the family ever
since Mr. Hamilton's first marriage, returned her salutation rather
gruffly, and then, stalking back to the kitchen, muttered to, those
who followed her, "I don't like her face nohow; she looks just like
the milk snakes, when they stick their heads in at the door."

"But you knew how she looked before," said Lucy, the chambermaid.

"I know it," returned Polly; "but when she was here nussin' I never
noticed _her_, more I would any on you; for who'd of thought that Mr.
Hamilton would marry her, when he knows, or or'to know, that nusses
ain't fust cut, nohow; and you may depend on't, things ain't a-goin'
to be here as they used to be."

Here Rachel started up, and related the circumstance of Margaret's
refusing to see "that little evil-eyed-lookin-varmint, with curls
almost like Polly's." Lucy, too, suddenly remembered something which
she had seen, or heard, or made up--so that Mrs. Carter had not been
an hour in the coveted homestead ere there was mutiny against her