Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/70

 62 family. His daily habit on his return from the fields at mid-day was to dismount at her gate and to sit laughing and talking with her for a half-hour. He consulted her about his plantation affairs as he did no one else, and her judgment was so sound that he relied on it. He missed her much after her death. No one ever filled her place with him either as adviser or friend. Our childish associations with Grannie Harriet were delightful. She petted and spoiled us to our hearts' content, and could not bear to have any fault found with us.

Especially at Christmas did we delight in going to her to beg for cake and other dainties. Mamma took care that she should have a good store on hand; and we, who knew nothing of this, praised grannie's things, and found them ever so much nicer than anything to be gotten at the "great house."

Sometimes we were allowed, as a very great treat, to wrap up in sheets and go to grannie's house to frighten her. Her feigned terror at the sight of the band of little ghosts filled us with rapture, only equalled by that we felt when, on suddenly dropping the sheets, we heard grannie's exclamation of astonishment that the master's children were playing such pranks on her.

She lived alone. We were not allowed to visit any of the other servants with such freedom. Her master said that he would be proud to hang her portrait in his drawing-room, in such esteem and affection did he hold her.

Owing to the delay with the sick horse, which was at the time looked on as an unmixed evil, the travellers did not reach the Mississippi plantation till two weeks later than had been calculated on. When they got there they found that the log houses in which they had expected to find shelter till better could be provided had been completely demolished by a cyclone. They were but a heap of timbers lying on the ground. Had they reached this place at the time set for their arrival they would have been in these houses, and could scarcely have escaped wdth their lives, for the cyclone had passed over in the night.