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 then! And who? I got a hint of that within the next five minutes, and I was appalled.

"Liza," said Randolph, descending to the practical, "who sweeps Miss Betty's room?"

"Laws, Mars Ran," replied the old negro, "'course I does everything fo' my chile. The house niggers don't do nothin'—that is, they don't do nothin' 'thouten I sets an' watches 'em. I sets when they washes the winders, and I sets when they sweeps, an' I sets when they makes the bed up. I's been a-settin' there all the time Miss Betty's been gone, 'ceptin', of course, when Mars Cedward was there."

She paused and tittered.

"Bless my life, how young folks does carry on! Every day heah comes Mars Cedward a-ridin' up, an' he says, 'Howdy, Mammy, I reckon if I can't see Miss Betty, I'll have to run upstairs an' look at her Ma.' An' he lights offen his horse, 'Get your key, Mammy,' he says, 'an' open the sacred po'tals.' And I gets the key outen my pocket an' unlocks the do' an' he whippits in there to that little picture of Miss Betty's Ma, that hangs over her bureau."

The old woman paused and wiped a mist from her spectacles with an immaculate and carefully folded handkerchief.

"Yes, yes, sah, 'co'se Miss Betty does look like her Ma—she's the very spit-an'-image of her. Well, I goes along back an' sets down on the stairsteps, an' waits till Mars Cedward gets done with 185