The Strength of Gideon | Page 8

and Miss Mima
stood before him, proud, cold, white, and beautiful.
He found his feet, and went forward to meet her. "Mr. Northcope," she
said, and offered her hand daintily, hesitatingly. He took it, and thought,
even in that flash of a second, what a soft, tiny hand it was.
"Yes," he said, "and I have been sitting here, overcome by the vastness
of your fine old house."
The "your" was delicate, she thought, but she only said, "Let me help
you to recovery with some tea. Mammy will bring some," and then she
blushed very red. "My old nurse is the only servant I have with me, and

she is always mammy to me." She remembered, and throwing up her
proud little head rang for the old woman.
Directly, Mammy Peggy came marching in like a grenadier. She bore a
tray with the tea things on it, and after she had set it down hovered in
the room as if to chaperon her mistress. Bartley felt decidedly
uncomfortable. Mima's manners were all that politeness could require,
but he felt as if she resented his coming even to his own, and he knew
that mammy looked upon him as an interloper.
[Illustration: "MAMMY PEGGY CAME MARCHING IN LIKE A
GRENADIER."]
Mima kept up well, only the paleness of her face showed what she felt
at leaving her home. Her voice was calm and impassive, only once it
trembled, when she wished that he would be as happy in the house as
she had been.
"I feel very much like an interloper," he said, "but I hope you won't feel
yourself entirely shut out from your beautiful home. My father, who
comes on in a few days is an invalid, and gets about very little, and I
am frequently from home, so pray make use of the grounds when you
please, and as much of the house as you find convenient."
A cold "thank you" fell from Mima's lips, but then she went on,
hesitatingly, "I should like to come sometimes to the hill, out there
behind the orchard." Her voice choked, but she went bravely on, "Some
of my dear ones are buried there."
"Go there, and elsewhere, as much as you please. That spot shall be
sacred from invasion."
"You are very kind," she said and rose to go. Mammy carried away the
tea things, and then came and waited silently by the door.
"I hope you will believe me, Miss Harrison," said Bartley, as Mima was
starting, "when I say that I do not come to your home as a vandal to
destroy all that makes its recollection dear to you; for there are some

associations about it that are almost as much to me as to you, since my
eyes have been opened."
"I do not understand you," she replied.
"I can explain. For some years past my father's condition has kept me
very closely bound to him, and both before and after the beginning of
the war, we lived abroad. A few years ago, I came to know and love a
man, who I am convinced now was your brother. Am I mistaken in
thinking that you are a sister of Philip Harrison?"
"No, no, he was my brother, my only brother."
"I met him in Venice just before the war and we came to be dear
friends. But in the events that followed so tumultuously, and from
participation in which, I was cut off by my father's illness, I lost sight
of him."
"But I don't believe I remember hearing my brother speak of you, and
he was not usually reticent."
"You would not remember me as Bartley Northcope, unless you were
familiar with the very undignified sobriquet with which your brother
nicknamed me," said the young man smiling.
"Nickname--what, you are not, you can't be 'Budge'?"
"I am 'Budge' or 'old Budge' as Phil called me."
Mima had her hand on the door-knob, but she turned with an impulsive
motion and went back to him. "I am so glad to see you," she said,
giving him her hand again, and "Mammy," she called, "Mr. Northcope
is an old friend of brother Phil's!"
The effect of this news on mammy was like that of the April sun on an
icicle. She suddenly melted, and came overflowing back into the room,
her smiles and grins and nods trickling everywhere under the genial
warmth of this new friendliness. Before one who had been a friend of

"Mas' Phil's," Mammy Peggy needed no pride.
"La, chile," she exclaimed, settling and patting the cushions of the chair
in which he had been sitting, "w'y didn' you say so befo'?"
"I wasn't sure that I was standing in the house of my old friend. I only
knew that he lived somewhere in Virginia."