friends. But in the events that followed so tumultuously, and from
participation in which, I was cut off by my father's illness, I lost
sight of him."

"But I don't believe I remember hearing my brother speak of you, and
he was not usually reticent."

"You would not remember me as Bartley Northcope, unless you were
familiar with the very undignified sobriquet with which your brother
nicknamed me," said the young man smiling.

"Nickname--what, you are not, you can't be 'Budge'?"

"I am 'Budge' or 'old Budge' as Phil called me."

Mima had her hand on the door-knob, but she turned with an impulsive
motion and went back to him. "I am so glad to see you," she said,
giving him her hand again, and "Mammy," she called, "Mr. Northcope is
an old friend of brother Phil's!"

The effect of this news on mammy was like that of the April sun on an
icicle. She suddenly melted, and came overflowing back into the room,
her smiles and grins and nods trickling everywhere under the genial
warmth of this new friendliness. Before one who had been a friend of
"Mas' Phil's," Mammy Peggy needed no pride.

"La, chile," she exclaimed, settling and patting the cushions of the
chair in which he had been sitting, "w'y didn' you say so befo'?"

"I wasn't sure that I was standing in the house of my old friend. I