"Miss Nina, if you'll let me speak my mind out frankly, now, I want to offer one piece of advice. Just be perfectly true and open with Mr. Clayton; and if he and Mr. Carson should come together, just tell him frankly how the matter stands. You are a Gordon, and they say truth always runs in the Gordon blood; and now, Miss Nina, you are no longer a school-girl, but a young lady at the head of the estate."
He stopped, and hesitated.
"Well, Harry, you needn't stop. I understand you—got a few grains of sense left, I hope, and haven't got so many friends that I can afford to get angry with you for nothing."
"I suppose," said Harry, thoughtfully, "that your aunt will be well enough to be down to the table. Have you told her how matters stand?"
"Who? Aunt Loo? Catch me telling her anything! No, Harry, I've got to stand all alone. I haven't any mother, and I haven't any sister; and Aunt Loo is worse than nobody, because it's provoking to have somebody round that you feel might take an interest, and ought to, and don't care a red cent for you. Well, I declare, if I'm not much,—if I'm not such a model as Miss Clayton, there,—how could any one expect it, when I have just come up by myself, first at the plantation, here, and then at that French boarding-school? I tell you what, Harry, boarding-schools are not what they're cried up to be. It's good fun, no doubt, but we never learnt anything there. That is to say, we never learnt it internally, but had it just rubbed on to us outside. A girl can't help, of course, learning something; and I've learnt just what I happened to like and couldn't help, and a deal that isn't of the most edifying nature besides."
Well! we shall see what will come!
CHAPTER VIII
OLD TIFF
"I SAY, Tiff, do you think he will come, tonight?"
"Laws, laws, Missis, how can Tiff tell? I's been a gazin' out de do'. Don't see nor hear nothin'."
"It's so lonesome!—so lonesome!—and the nights so long!"
And the speaker, an emaciated, feeble little woman, turned herself uneasily on the ragged pallet where she was lying, and, twirling her slender fingers nervously, gazed up at the rough, unplastered beams above.
The room was of the coarsest and rudest cast. The hut was framed of rough pine logs, filled between the crevices with mud and straw; the floor made of rough-split planks, unevenly jointed together; the window was formed by some single panes arranged in a row where a gap had been made in one of the logs. At one end was a rude chimney of sticks, where smouldered a fire of pine-cones and brushwood, covered over with a light coat of white ashes. On the mantel over it was a shelf, which displayed sundry vials, a cracked teapot and tumbler, some medicinal-looking packages, a turkey's wing, much abridged and defaced by frequent usage, some bundles of dry herbs, and lastly a gayly painted mug of coarse crockery-ware, containing a bunch of wild-flowers. On pegs, driven into the logs, were arranged different articles of female attire, and divers little coats and dresses, which belonged to smaller wearers, with now and then soiled and coarse articles of man's apparel.