On the first day after her return from town Mrs. Colbert summoned Till and told her she meant to go out to see Aunt Jezebel this morning. “I will have a look around the yard first. Send Nancy in to dress me, and tell Tap to have the boys here in about an hour.”

The “boys” were young negroes whom Tap called in from the barn or the fields to help him carry the Mistress. On each side of her chair were two iron rings; into these the boys thrust dressed hickory saplings and bore Mrs. Colbert about the place. Tap was one of the mill-hands, but he loved to wait on ladies. He was a handsome boy, and he knew the Mistress thought so. He used to make his assistants clean up on these occasions. “Take off dat sweaty ole rag an’ put on a clean shirt fo’ de Missus.”

This morning the sunshine was so bright that the Mistress carried a tiny parasol with a jointed handle. Her bearers took her along the brick walks bordered by clipped boxwood hedges, — which were dark as yew except for the yellow-green tips of new growth. Mrs. Colbert visited all the flower-beds. The lilac arbour was now in bud, the yellow roses would soon be opening. The Mistress sent Tap for her shears and cut off sprays from the mock-orange bushes, which were filling the air with fragrance. With these in her lap she moved on, until she was carried into old Jezebel’s cabin and her chair put down beside the bed.

“You know who it is, don’t you, Aunt Jezebel?”

“Co’se I does, Miss Sapphy! Ain’t I knowed you since de day you was bawn?” The old woman turned on her side to see her mistress better.

She had wasted since Sapphira saw her last. As she lay curled up in bed, she looked very like a lean old grey monkey. (She had been a tall, strapping woman.) Her grizzled wool was twisted up in bits of rag. She was toothless, and her black skin had taken on a greyish cast. Jezebel thought she was about ninety-five. She knew she was eighteen when she was captured and sold to a British slaver, but she was not sure how many years passed before she learned English and began to keep account of time.

Mrs. Colbert put the sprays of syringa down on the pillow, close to the old woman’s face. “The mock-oranges are out, I thought you’d like to smell them. There’s not a man on the place can tend the shrubs like you did.”

“Thank ‘ee, mam. I hepped you set out most all de shrubs on dis place, didn’ I? Wasn’t nothin’ when we first come here but dat ole white lilack tree.”

“Those were good times, Auntie. I’ve been house-bound for a long while now, like you.”

“Oh, Missy, cain’t dem doctors in Winchester do nothin’ fur you? What’s dey good fur, anyways?” She broke off with a wheeze.

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