darky stood on the top step of an old-fashioned, high-stoop house,
craning his head up and down and across Kennedy Square in the effort to
get the first glimpse of his master, St. George Wilmot Temple, attorney
and counsellor-at-law, who was expected home from a ducking trip down
the bay.

Whether it was the need of this very diet, or whether St. George had
felt a sudden longing for the out-of-doors, is a matter of doubt, but
certain it is that some weeks before the very best shot in the county
had betaken himself to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, accompanied by his
guns, his four dogs, and two or three choice men of fashion--young
bloods of the time--men with whom we shall become better acquainted as
these chronicles go on--there to search for the toothsome and elusive
canvas-back for which his State was famous.

That the darky was without a hat and in his shirt-sleeves, and it
winter--the middle of January, really--the only warm thing about him
being the green baize apron tied about his waist, his customary livery
when attending to his morning duties--did not trouble him in the least.
Marse George might come any minute, and he wanted to be the first to
welcome him.

For the past few weeks Todd had had the house to himself. Coal-black
Aunt Jemima, with her knotted pig-tails, capacious bosom, and unconfined
waist, forty years his senior and ten shades darker in color, it is
true, looked after the pots and pans, to say nothing of a particular
spit on which her master's joints and game were roasted; but the upper
part of the house, which covered the drawing-room, dining-room, bedroom,
and dressing-room in the rear, as well as the outside of the dwelling,
including even the green-painted front door and the slant of white