the Colonel, laughing.

"Th' ain't none 'cept de bes' quality keep they word dat-a-way," said
Ned, as he went off to tell Uncle Ben in the kitchen.

Was there ever, in all this wide country, a good cook who was not a
tyrant? Uncle Ben Carvel was a veritable emperor in his own domain; and
the Colonel himself, had he desired to enter the kitchen, would have been
obliged to come with humble and submissive spirit. As for Virginia, she
had had since childhood more than one passage at arms with Uncle Ben. And
the question of who had come off victorious had been the subject of many
a debate below stairs.

There were a few days in the year, however, when Uncle Ben permitted the
sanctity of his territory to be violated. One was the seventh of
December. On such a day it was his habit to retire to the broken chair
beside the sink (the chair to which he had clung for five-and-twenty
years). There he would sit, blinking, and carrying on the while an
undercurrent of protests and rumblings, while Miss Virginia and other
young ladies mixed and chopped and boiled and baked and gossiped. But woe
to the unfortunate Rosetta if she overstepped the bounds of respect! Woe
to Ned or Jackson or Tato, if they came an inch over the threshold from
the hall beyond! Even Aunt Easter stepped gingerly, though she was wont
to affirm, when assisting Miss Jinny in her toilet, an absolute contempt
for Ben's commands.

"So Ben ordered you out, Mammy?" Virginia would say mischievously.

"Order me out! Hugh! think I'se skeered o' him, honey? Reckon I'd frail
'em good ef he cotched hole of me with his black hands. Jes' let him try