It was a sore affliction to the old woman to be thus incapacitated during her latter years, and rendered unable to watch and control her household affairs. She was sure that she was being robbed continuously and on all sides. This conviction was nourished and kept alive by her confidential servant Dimple, a very black girl of sixteen, who trod softly about on her bare feet and had thereby made her self unpopular in the kitchen and down at the quarters.
The notion had entered Madame Solisainte’s head to have one of her neices come up from New Orleans and stay with her. She thought it would be doing the niece and her family a great kindness, and would furthermore be an incalculable saving to herself in many ways, and far cheaper than hiring a housekeeper.
There were four nieces, not too well off, with whom she was indifferently acquainted. In selecting one of these to make her home on the plantation she exercised no choice, leaving that matter to her sister and the girls, to be settled among them.
It was Bosey who consented to go to her aunt. Her mother spelled her name Bosé. She herself spelled it Bosey. But as often as not she was called plain Bose. It was she who was sent, because, as her mother wrote to Madame Solisainte, Bosé was a splendid manager, a most excellent housekeeper, and moreover possessed a tempermant of such rare amiablilty that none could help being cheered and enlivened by her presence.
What she did not write was that none of the other girls would entertain the notion for an instant of making even a temporary abiding place with their Tante Félicie. And Bosey’s consent was only wrung from her with the understanding that the undertaking was purely experimental, and that she bound herself by no cast-iron obligations.
Madame Solisainte had sent the wagon to the station for her neice, and was impatiently awaiting its return. “It’s no sign of the wagon yet, Dimple? You don’t see it? You don’t year it coming?”