MAMMY PEGGY'S PRIDE


In the failing light of the midsummer evening, two women sat upon the
broad veranda that ran round three sides of the old Virginia mansion.
One was young and slender with the slightness of delicate girlhood.
The other was old, black and ample,--a typical mammy of the old south.
The girl was talking in low, subdued tones touched with a note of
sadness that was strange in one of her apparent youth, but which
seemed as if somehow in consonance with her sombre garments.

"No, no, Peggy," she was saying, "we have done the best we could, as
well as even papa could have expected of us if he had been here. It
was of no use to keep struggling and straining along, trying to keep
the old place from going, out of a sentiment, which, however honest it
might have been, was neither common sense nor practical. Poor people,
and we are poor, in spite of the little we got for the place, cannot
afford to have feelings. Of course I hate to see strangers take
possession of the homestead, and--and--papa's and mamma's and brother
Phil's graves are out there on the hillside. It is hard,--hard, but
what was I to do? I couldn't plant and hoe and plow, and you couldn't,
so I am beaten, beaten." The girl threw out her hands with a
despairing gesture and burst into tears.

Mammy Peggy took the brown head in her lap and let her big hands
wander softly over the girl's pale face. "Sh,--sh," she said as if she
were soothing a baby, "don't go on lak dat. W'y whut's de mattah wid
you, Miss Mime? 'Pears lak you done los' all yo' spe'it. Whut you