ends in the attic was relegated to an outhouse, and even the general's
aunt, Miss Griselda Grigsby, was turned unceremoniously out of her
apartment before the all-pervading soap-suds of cleaning day.

As for the servants, a sudden miraculous zeal possessed them. Within a
fortnight the garden rows were hoed free from grass, the hops were
gathered from the fence, and the weeds on the lawn vanished beneath
small black fingers. Even the annual threshing of the harvest was
accomplished under the overseeing eye of "Miss Chris," as she was called
by the coloured population. During the week that the old machine poured
out its chaffless wheat and the driver whistled in the centre of the
treadmill Miss Chris appeared at the barn at noon each day to warn the
hands against waste of time and to see that the mules were well watered.

But the revolutions without were as naught to the internal ones. Aunt
Verbeny, the cook, whose tyranny had extended over thirty years, was
assisted from her pedestal, and the hen-house keys were removed from the
nail of the kitchen wall.

"This will never do, Verbeny," said Miss Chris a month after her
arrival. "We could not possibly have eaten three dozen chickens within
the last week. I am afraid you take them home without asking me."

Aunt Verbeny, a fat old woman with a shining black skin, smoothed her
checked apron with offended dignity.

"Hi! Miss Chris, ain't I de cook?" she exclaimed.

But Miss Chris preserved her ground.