WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED.

CHAPTER I.

HARRY LOUDON MAKES UP HIS MIND.


On a wooden bench under a great catalpa-tree, in the front yard of a
comfortable country-house in Virginia, sat Harry and Kate Loudon
worrying their minds. It was all about old Aunt Matilda.

Aunt Matilda was no relation of these children. She was an old colored
woman, who lived in a cabin about a quarter of a mile from their house,
but they considered her one of their best friends. Her old log cabin was
their favorite resort, and many a fine time they had there. When they
caught some fish, or Harry shot a bird or two, or when they could get
some sweet potatoes or apples to roast, and some corn-meal for
ash-cakes, they would take their provisions to Aunt Matilda and she
would cook them. Sometimes an ash-cake would be baked rather harder than
it was convenient to bite, and it had happened that a fish or two had
been cooked entirely away, but such mishaps were not common. Aunt
Matilda was indeed a most wonderful cook--and a cook, too, who liked to
have a boy and a girl by her while she was at work; and who would tell
them stories--as queer old stories as ever were told--while the things
were cooking. The stories were really the cause of the ash-cakes and
fish sometimes being forgotten.

And it is no wonder that these children were troubled in their minds.