"What makes you think that?" Aunty Losh asked, with a trace of apprehension.
"'Cause Sylv don't think of nothin' now but book-larnin', and he's been hevin' talks with that ar fellow."
"Sylv'll be goin' off and leavin' us one o' these days," the old woman mused, as she put a match to the short pipe she had been filling for herself.
"Oh no, aunty! You ortenter think he'd be so mean!" Deely protested, with energy.
Dennis turned upon her, angered. "You keep still, d'you har!" he exclaimed. "What matters if he do go? I reckon I can take car o' you and aunty, all by myself, when it comes to that."
Deely was evidently impressed by his dictatorial manner, but she assumed a haughty air. "_I_ reckon it's about time for me to go," she retorted, "if you can't be more civil. Just when aunty hain't no more'n set her foot inside o' home, too." And, despite her tone, there was a slight appearance about the girl's lips and eyelids as if she would like to cry.
"Oh, well; I didn't mean nothin', you know I didn't," Dennis answered, becoming penitent. "And when you go," he added, "I'm a-goin' with you as far as your dad's."
The rising trouble was thus allayed, and all three were soon engaged again in talking over the news, or the local affairs of the last few weeks. For Aunty Losh had achieved one of the most remarkable events of her life, in going to see some of her relatives at Norfolk, Virginia. She had much to tell about the journey and the ways of the people in that great city, and dwelt especially upon the hardship she had been compelled to suffer in drinking "China tea," instead of that far superior docoction, yaupon. The young people, in their turn, gradually discovered many little items which they must impart to her.
Aunty Losh, strange as it may seem, was the sole female representative of a stock which once gave promise of making itself distinguished. Her lineage was traceable from a certain Major De Vine, a young Irishman who, stirred by the sympathy that led the natives of two widely separate but oppressed countries to join the cause of the American colonies, had enlisted in the cavalry corps raised by Count Pulaski to join the Continental army, during our Revolution. Pulaski was a Pole, and De Vine an Irishman, but they had the same inspiration: they fought for freedom in America with the hope that their own people might also become free. De Vine performed many a gallant deed, in the course of the war, and rose to be a major; but the consciousness of his good service was his only recompense.