the last time we played it; so please, _dear_ David! If
you'll play house in the tree, I'll give you a piece of my
taffy." She took a little sticky package out of her pocket and
licked her lips to indicate its contents;--David yielded,
shinning up the trunk of the tree, indifferent to the trousers,
which had been on his mind ever since he had put them on his
legs.

Blair followed him, but Nannie squatted on the ground content to
merely look at the courageous three.

"Come on up," said Elizabeth. Nannie shook her little blond head.
At which the others burst into a shrill chorus: "'Fraid-cat!
'fraid-cat! 'fraid-cat!" Nannie smiled placidly; it never
occurred to her to deny such an obviously truthful title.
"Blair," she said, continuing a conversation interrupted by
Elizabeth's determination to climb, "Blair, _why_ do you say
things that make Mamma mad? What's the sense? If it makes her mad
for you to say things are ugly, why do you?"

"'Cause," Blair said briefly. Even at eight Blair disliked both
explanations and decisions, and his slave and half-sister rarely
pressed for either. With the exception of his mother, whose
absorption in business had never given her time to get acquainted
with him, most of the people about Blair were his slaves.
Elizabeth's governess, Miss White--called by Elizabeth, for
reasons of her own, "Cherry-pie"--had completely surrendered to
his brown eyes; the men in the Maitland Works toadied to him;
David Richie blustered, perhaps, but always gave in to him; in
his own home, Harris, who was a cross between a butler and a