When Mrs. Carteret had fully¹ recovered from the shock attendant upon the accident at the window, where little Dodie had so narrowly escaped death or serious injury, she ordered her carriage one afternoon and directed the coachman to drive her to Mrs. Ochiltree's.  
Mrs. Carteret had discharged her young nurse only the day before, and had sent for Mammy Jane, who was now recovered from her rheumatism², to stay until she could find another girl. The nurse had been ordered not to take the child to negroes' houses. Yesterday, in driving past the old homestead of her husband's family, now occupied by Dr. Miller³ and his family, Mrs. Carteret had seen her own baby's carriage standing⁴ in the yard.
 
When the nurse returned home, she was immediately discharged. She offered some sort of explanation, to the effect that her sister worked for Mrs. Miller, and that some family matter had rendered it necessary for her to see her sister. The explanation only aggravated⁵ the offense⁶: if Mrs. Carteret could have overlooked the disobedience, she would by no means have retained in her employment a servant whose sister worked for the Miller woman.
 
Old Mrs. Ochiltree had within a few months begun to show signs of breaking up. She was over seventy years old, and had been of late, by various afflictions, confined to the house much of the time. More than once within the year, Mrs. Carteret had asked her aunt to come and live with her; but Mrs. Ochiltree, who would have regarded such a step as an acknowledgment of weakness, preferred her lonely independence. She resided in a small, old-fashioned house, standing back in the middle of a garden on a quiet street. Two old servants made up her modest household.
 
This refusal to live with her niece had been lightly borne, for Mrs. Ochiltree was a woman of strong individuality, whose comments upon her acquaintance, present or absent, were marked by a frankness at times no less than startling. This characteristic caused her to be more or less avoided. Mrs. Ochiltree was aware of this sentiment on the part of her acquaintance, and rather exulted⁷ in it. She hated fools. Only fools ran away from her, and that because they were afraid she would expose their folly⁸. If most people were fools, it was no fault of hers, and she was not obliged to indulge them by pretending to believe that they knew anything. She had once owned considerable property, but was reticent⁹ about her affairs, and told no one how much she was worth, though it was supposed that she had considerable ready money, besides her house and some other real estate. Mrs. Carteret was her nearest living relative, though her grand-nephew Tom Delamere had been a great favorite with her. If she did not spare him her tongue-lashings, it was nevertheless expected in the family that she would leave him something handsome in her will.
 
Mrs. Ochiltree had shared in the general rejoicing upon the advent¹¹ of the Carteret baby. She had been one of his godmothers, and had hinted at certain intentions held by her concerning him. During Mammy Jane's administration she had tried the old nurse's patience more or less by her dictatorial¹² interference. Since her partial confinement¹³ to the house, she had gone, when her health and the weather would permit, to see the child, and at other times had insisted that it be sent to her in charge of the nurse at least every other day.
 
Mrs. Ochiltree's faculties¹⁴ had shared insensibly in the decline of her health. This weakness manifested itself by fits of absent-mindedness, in which she would seemingly lose connection with the present, and live over again, in imagination, the earlier years of her life. She had buried two husbands, had tried in vain to secure a third, and had never borne any children. Long ago she had petrified¹⁵ into a character which nothing under heaven could change, and which, if death is to take us as it finds us, and the future life to keep us as it takes us, promised anything but eternal felicity to those with whom she might associate after this life. Tom Delamere had been heard to say, profanely¹⁶, that if his Aunt Polly went to heaven, he would let his mansion¹⁷ in the skies on a long lease, at a low figure.
 
When the carriage drove up with Mrs. Carteret, her aunt was seated on the little front piazza¹⁸, with her wrinkled hands folded in her lap, dozing¹⁹ the afternoon away in fitful slumber²⁰.
 
"Tie the horse, William," said Mrs. Carteret, "and then go in and wake
Aunt Polly, and tell her I want her to come and drive with me."
Mrs. Ochiltree had not observed her niece's approach, nor did she look up when William drew near. Her eyes were closed, and she would let her head sink slowly forward, recovering it now and then with a spasmodic jerk.
 
"Colonel Ochiltree," she muttered, "was shot at the battle of Culpepper Court House, and left me a widow for the second time. But I would not have married any man on earth after him."
 
"Mis' Ochiltree!" cried William, raising his voice, "oh, Mis'
Ochiltree!"
"If I had found a man,—a real man,—I might have married again. I did not care for weaklings. I could have married John Delamere if I had wanted him. But pshaw! I could have wound him round"—
 
"Go round to the kitchen, William," interrupted Mrs. Carteret impatiently, "and tell Aunt Dinah to come and wake her up."
 
William returned in a few moments with a fat, comfortable looking black woman, who curtsied to Mrs. Carteret at the gate, and then going up to her mistress seized her by the shoulder and shook her vigorously.
 
"Wake up dere, Mis' Polly," she screamed, as harshly as her mellow²¹ voice would permit. "Mis' 'Livy wants you ter go drivin' wid 'er!"
 
"Dinah," exclaimed the old lady, sitting suddenly upright with a defiant²² assumption of wakefulness, "why do you take so long to come when I call? Bring me my bonnet²³ and shawl. Don't you see my niece waiting for me at the gate?"
 
"Hyuh dey is, hyuh dey is!" returned Dinah, producing the bonnet and shawl, and assisting Mrs. Ochiltree to put them on.
 
Leaning on William's arm, the old lady went slowly down the walk, and was handed to the rear seat with Mrs. Carteret.
 
"How's the baby to-day, Olivia, and why didn't you bring him?"
 
"He has a cold to-day, and is a little hoarse," replied Mrs. Carteret, "so I thought it best not to bring him out. Drive out the Weldon road, William, and back by Pine Street."
 
The drive led past an eminence²⁴ crowned by a handsome brick building of modern construction, evidently an institution of some kind, surrounded on three sides by a grove²⁵ of venerable oaks.
 
"Hugh Poindexter," Mrs. Ochiltree exclaimed explosively, after a considerable silence, "has been building a new house, in place of the old family mansion burned during the war."
 
"It isn't Mr. Poindexter's house, Aunt Polly. That is the new colored hospital built by the colored doctor."
 
"The new colored hospital, indeed, and the colored doctor! Before the war the negroes were all healthy, and when they got sick we took care of them ourselves! Hugh Poindexter has sold the graves of his ancestors to a negro,—I should have starved first!"
 
"He had his grandfather's grave opened, and there was nothing to remove, except a few bits of heart-pine from the

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