"Never mind granny," she said, when they reached the house and Mandy
stopped to say how d'ye to the old woman in the chair. "Come upstairs
with me and help me change my gown."

"Faw de Lawd's sake, is he yer beau?" Mandy Ann asked, as she saw the
excitement of her mistress, who was tearing around the room, now
laughing, now dashing the tears away and giving the most contradicting
orders as to what she was to wear and Mandy Ann was to get for her.

They heard the two knocks and knew that some one had entered the house,
but Mandy Ann was too busy blacking a pair of boots to go at once, as
she had her hands to wash, and yet, although it seemed to him an age, it
was scarcely two minutes before she came down the stairs, nimble as a
cat, and bobbed before him with a courtesy nearly to the floor. Her
mistress had said to her. "Mind your manners. You say you have learned a
heap in Jacksonville."

"To be shoo'. I've seen de quality thar in Miss Perkins's house," Mandy
Ann replied, and hence the courtesy she thought rather fetching,
although she shook a little as she confronted the stranger, whose
features never relaxed in the least, and who did not answer her. "How
d'ye, Mas'r," which she felt it incumbent to say, as there was no one
else to receive him.

Mandy Ann was very bright, and as she knew no restraint in her Florida
home, when alone with her old Miss and young Miss, she was apt to be
rather familiar for a negro slave, and a little inclined to humor. She
knew whom the gentleman had come to see, but when he said. "Is your
mistress at home?" she turned at once to the piece of parchment in the
rocking-chair and replied. "To be shoo. Dar she is in de char over dar.