to what he called the wash-up bench on the back porch.

I looked up at Sam as he stood above me in a mingling of fire-glow and
the early morning light with his low-beamed, deep-toned humble home as a
background, and he--he loomed.

"I--I love this place," I positively gasped, as I moved still closer to
Mammy and stirred the spoon in the pot of hash.

"Shelter, fire, a chicken in the pot, and a woman crouched on the hearth
stirring it--what more could any man want or get, no matter how he
worked?" answered Sam, as he looked down at me with the smolder in his
blue-flecked hazel eyes to which Peter had once written a poem called
"On the Gridiron."

"Yes, but what would you do if you didn't have Mammy?" I ventured back,
as I bent across Mammy's knee and began to stir more vigorously while
she shook up her coffee-pot and raked a few last coals over the cakes
for their complete browning. "You always were a good provider, Sam," I
added, under the excitement of the bubbling over of the coffee.

"Yes, locusts for hollyhock children and the wife of a summer day who--"

"Whew-shk! but my stomick have got a breakfas' notice," interrupted Dr.
Chubb. He and the Byrd had come into the room as hungry as ravening
wolves.

While Mammy stirred and shoveled off ashes I fed all three men to the
point of utter repletion, feeding myself from Sam's plate as I brought
the food back and forth. He didn't want me to wait on them, and I