reawakened. The boys he had played with, too, had almost forgotten him,
but his return called him to mind again and put them all in a flutter. A
boy who had lived five years on the other side of the ocean and had been
to an English boarding school, was not seen in Richmond every day. Mrs.
Allan gave him a party to which all of the children in their circle were
invited. In anticipation of this, he had purchased in London, out of the
abundance of pocket-money with which his doting foster-mother always saw
to it he was provided, a number of little gifts to be distributed among
the boys at home. These, with the distinction his travels gave him, made
him the man of the hour among Richmond children. And how much he had to
tell! At Stoke-Newington it was always the boys at home that were the
heroes of the stories he spun by the yard for the entertainment of his
school-fellows--the literal among whom had come to believe that there
was no feat a Virginia boy could not perform. Now that he was in
Richmond, the Stoke-Newington boys themselves loomed up as the
wonder-workers, and his playmates listened with admiration and with such
expression as, "Caesar's ghost!"--"Jiminy!"--"Cracky!" and the like, as
he narrated his tales of "Freckles," "Goggles," "the Beau," and the
rest.

One of his first visits after reaching home was to his old black
"Mammy," in the tiny cottage, with its prolific garden-spot, on the
outskirts of the town, in which Mr. Allan had installed her and her
husband, "Uncle Billy," before leaving Virginia.

"Mammy" was expecting him. With one half of her attention upon the white
cotton socks she was knitting for her spouse and the other half on the
gate of her small garden through which her "chile" would come, she sat
in her doorway awaiting him. She was splendidly arrayed in her new
purple calico and a big white apron, just from under the iron. Her