young ladies of the family kept her flat-irons busy with their endless
tucks and ruffles. She found a good market, too, for all the eggs she
could induce her buff cochins to lay, and all the berries that she
could make John Jay pick.

This bright June morning she stood in the door with a basket of fresh
eggs in her hand, looking anxiously across the fields to the gables of
Rosehaven, and grumbling to herself.

"Heah I done promise Miss Hallie these fresh aigs for her bufday cake,
an' no way to get 'em to her. I'll nevah get all these clothes done up
by night if I stop my i'onin', an' John Jay's done lit out again! little
black rascal!" She lifted up her voice in another wavering call. "John
Ja-a-y!" The beech woods opposite threw back the echo of her voice,
sweet and clear,--"Ja-a-y!"

"Heah I come, Mammy!" cried a panting voice. "I was jus' turnin' the
grine-stone for Uncle Billy."

She looked at him suspiciously an instant, then handed him the basket.
"Take these aigs ovah to Miss Hallie," she ordered, "and mind you be
quickah'n you was last time, or they might hatch befo' you get there."

"Law now, Mammy!" said John Jay, with a grin. He snatched at the basket,
impatient to be off, for while standing before her he had kept
scratching his right shoulder with his left hand; not that there was any
need to do so, but it gave him an excuse for holding together the jagged
edges of a great tear in his new shirt. He was afraid it might be
discovered before he could get away.