The party had a very pleasant visit with the blind woman. Unc’ Simmy appeared suddenly before them, his coachman’s coat and gloves discarded, and a rusty black coat in place of the livery. He bore a tray with high, beautifully thin, tinkling glasses of lemonade, with a sprig of mint in each.
“Nobody makes lemonade quite like Uncle Simmy,” Miss Catalpa said kindly, and the old negro’s face shone like a polished kitchen range at the praise. It was evident that he fairly worshiped his mistress.
The visitors left at last. Helen understood now why they had come. That afternoon the girls were left to their own devices while Mrs. Parsons sought out Colonel Wilder and made some provision for helping in the support of Miss Catalpa and her old servant.
“No, my dear,” she said to Ruth. “You may help a little; but not much. Wait until you become a self-supporting woman—as you will be, I know. Then you can have the full pleasure of helping other people as you desire. I can only enjoy it because my cotton fields have made me rich. When we use money that has been left to us, or given to us in some way, for charitable purposes, we lose the sweeter taste of giving away that which we have actually earned.
“And I thank you, my dear,” she added, “for giving me the opportunity of helping Miss Grogan and Uncle Simmy.”
The party was off on its real tour into Dixie the next day. They were to take the route in a leisurely fashion to the Merredith plantation, and, as Nettie laughingly put it, “would go all around Robin Hood’s barn” to reach that South Carolinian Garden of Eden.
“But we want you to really _see_ something of the South on the way; it will be so warm—or, will seem so to you No’therners—when you come back, that you will only be thinking of taking the steamer at Norfolk for New York.
“Now you shall see something of Richmond and Charleston, anyway,” concluded the Louisiana girl. “And next winter I hope you’ll go home with me to my own canebrakes and bayous. _Then_ we’ll have a good time, I assure you.”
Ruth and Helen were having a good time. Everybody about the hotel treated them like grown-up young ladies—and of course such deferential attentions delighted two schoolgirls just set free from the scholastic yoke.