CHAPTER I.

DIDDIE, DUMPS, AND TOT.


They were three little sisters, daughters of a Southern planter, and
they lived in a big white house on a cotton plantation in Mississippi.
The house stood in a grove of cedars and live-oaks, and on one side was
a flower-garden, with two summer-houses covered with climbing roses and
honeysuckles, where the little girls would often have tea-parties in the
pleasant spring and summer days. Back of the house was a long avenue of
water-oaks leading to the quarters where the negroes lived.

Major Waldron, the father of the children, owned a large number of
slaves, and they loved him and his children very dearly. And the little
girls loved them, particularly "Mammy," who had nursed their mother, and
now had entire charge of the children; and Aunt Milly, a lame yellow
woman, who helped Mammy in the nursery; and Aunt Edy, the head
laundress, who was never too busy to amuse them. Then there was Aunt
Nancy, the "tender," who attended to the children for the field-hands,
and old Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who could scarcely walk at all, because he
had been bitten by a snake when he was a boy: so now he had a little
shop, where he made baskets of white-oak splits for the hands to pick
cotton in; and he always had a story ready for the children, and would
let them help him weave baskets whenever Mammy would take them to the
shop.

Besides these, there were Riar, Chris, and Dilsey, three little negroes,