Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/148

144 The old woman was propped up on snowy pillows in a great four-posted bed. Her cabin was as clean as clean could be, it being the pride and pleasure of her children and grandchildren to keep everything in perfect order for the bedridden Aunt Pearly Gates. She lived alone with her faithful Si, but was visited daily by members of her family who attended to her few wants. There she lay, year in and year out, knitting and tatting and receiving her visitors with kindliness and cheer, listening to the tales of happiness and sorrow poured into her sympathetic ears by old and young, colored and white.

She looked keenly but kindly at Rebecca, smiling at her garlands of daisies.

"So you air Marse Tom's lil' gal. You don't favor him none in looks 'cept'n he wa' a great hand to play act, but 'pearances ain't eve'ything. If you air got his kind ways and laughin' heart that'll mean mo'n jes' his outsides. 'Member, chil', when you wants a frien', ol' Pearly Gates am always here in the baid ready ter sarve you."

Then she must listen to Jo's account of his brother's return and look at the new camera.

"Philip's coming to see you soon, he says, but he's got a lot to do. Gee, I wouldn't work like him, not for nothing. I say let Ol' Abe and Young Abe and Little Abe do the work the