Colonel Musgrave was alone. He had lifted his emptied coffee-cup and he
swished the lees gently to and fro. He was curiously intent upon these
lees, considered them in the light of a symbol....
Then a comfortable, pleasant-faced mulattress came to clear the
supper-table. Virginia they called her. Virginia had been nurse in turn
to all the children of Rudolph Musgrave's parents; and to the end of her
life she appeared to regard the emancipation of the South's negroes as
an irrelevant vagary of certain "low-down" and probably "ornery" Yankees
--as an, in short, quite eminently "tacky" proceeding which very
certainly in no way affected her vested right to tyrannize over the
Musgrave household.
"Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave, "don't forget to make up a fire in
the kitchen-stove before you go to bed. And please fill the kettle
before you go upstairs, and leave it on the stove. Miss Agatha is not
well to-night."
"Yaas, suh. I unnerstan', suh," Virginia said, sedately.
Virginia filled her tray, and went away quietly, her pleasant yellow
face as imperturbable as an idol's.