_Girls_ (_in unison_). I'm sure we hope so.
_Salesman_ (_as_ Stranger _starts to leave_). To whom shall I charge your curtains and rugs, madam?
_Stranger_. Yes? Quite a coincidence--isn't it?
_Stranger_. Thirty-three West Blank Street.
_Girls_ (_in great excitement_). The number of our new house!
_Stranger_. Future step-mother? Who ever heard of a step-mother being a companion, my dear girls?
_Stranger_. The marplot that was to spoil everything when her daughters returned from boarding-school.
_Salesman_. Here, check, take this to the office.
_Madge_. Wait a moment, boy. You see we have gained a "step," too.
_Madge_ (_embracing_ Stranger). I was sure I should like you.
_Bess_ (_taking her hand affectionately_). I thought so once, but now I know that circumstances alter cases.
When I was last in the South, the gentleman at whose house I was visiting asked a trustworthy old colored man to get him a green boy from the country to be trained as a house servant. In a day or so the old man drove up to the door and put out of his wagon a sturdy-looking lad of fifteen or so, black as the ace of spades, and clad in raiment seemingly made of selections from a rag-bag. With a small bundle in his hand he approached the gallery--that is what a porch in some parts of the South is called--where I was sitting with my host, Mr. Prettyman. The boy took off his hat and made not a bow exactly but an inclination of his head, grinning from ear to ear, and displaying as white and useful a set of teeth as is often seen.
"What is your name?" Mr. Prettyman asked.
"I lives wid Aunty," the boy said, and his manner now showed that he was getting embarrassed, for he did not giggle, but smiled nervously.
"Where does Aunty live?" Mr. Prettyman inquired.
I suspect that this question made Jim Dandy fear that Mr. Prettyman did not have as much sense as a gentleman living in a fine house in town ought to have. He hesitated a moment, and then, moving his head sideways, said, "Aunty, she live over yonder."
This was most indefinite, but it was evidently the best that Jim Dandy could do for the moment, so Mr. Prettyman took him round to the kitchen at the back of the house and put him in charge of the cook, who was also the old housekeeper. And so Jim Dandy was engaged. In the course of an hour he was trying to learn his way about the house and feel comfortable in a suit of blue clothes with many brass buttons. But there was another ordeal for Jim Dandy. When Mrs. Prettyman reached home later in the day she decided that the new "buttons" must be called James. And so he was called on formal occasions, but with the children at least Jim Dandy stuck.