MAMMY’S STORY. 13

position in which we were placed. Our father had
been a man of peculiarly reserved and retiring
manners ; he had formed no friendships in England,
and the few people he knew were simply business
acquaintances. An execution had been put into the
house even before his death, so that we had no
power over a single article it contained.

The servants, with the exception of my sisters’
black nurse, had gone away, and we had not a
friend whose hospitality we could claim. She, good
creature (Mammy, as we called her), finding out, on
seeing my trunk in the hall, that I had arrived,
came breathless, from hurrymg up stairs, into the
room, and embracing me, kissed my forehead and
cheeks as if I had still been a little child; and I
felt the big drops fall from her eyes as she held me
in her shrivelled arms. ‘Sad all this, Massa Harry,
but we got good Fader up dere, and He take care
of us though He call massa away,’ and she cast ber
eyes to heaven, trusting with a simple firm faith to
receive from thence that protection she might have
justly feared she was not likely to obtain on earth.
‘We all have our sorrows, dear children,’ she con-
tinued, ‘massa had many sorrows when he lose
your mother and his fortune, and I have my sor-