"Is the house closed?"

"Naw, suh, hit ain closed, but Miss Molly she's got de keys up yonder at
de house er de overseer."

"Well, send somebody with a grain of sense out here, and I'll look up
Miss Molly."

At this the butler vanished promptly into the kitchen, and a minute
later a half-grown mulatto boy relieved Gay of his horse, while he
pointed to a path through an old apple orchard that led to the cottage
of the overseer. As the young man passed under the gnarled boughs to a
short flagged walk before the small, whitewashed house in which "Miss
Molly" lived, he wondered idly if the lady who kept the keys would prove
to be the amazing little person he had seen some hours earlier perched
on the load of fodder in the ox-cart. The question was settled almost
before it was asked, for a band of lamplight streamed suddenly from the
door of the cottage, and in the centre of it appeared the figure of
a girl in a white dress, with red stockings showing under her short
skirts, and a red ribbon filleting the thick brown curls on her
forehead. From her movements he judged that she was mixing a bowl of
soft food for the old hound at her feet, and he waited until she had
called the dog inside for his supper, before he went forward and spoke
her name in his pleasant voice.

At the sound she turned with a start, and he saw her vivid little face,
with the wonderful eyes, go white for a minute.

"So you are Mr. Jonathan? I thought so," she said at last, "but