looking at her sister with a reproving glance, when the door had closed behind Milly.

“Well, but she did make a spice cake, and it smells awfully good,” said Virgie. “It’s warm now, and she wouldn’t break a crumb of it for me.”

“There!” said Kate, triumphantly. “You see how people are helped out, when they prevaricate for high moral ends. Come on to the kitchen. I’ll never pretend to be smart again if I can’t put Aunt Milly in good spirits before we’ve been there long.”

It would have been an incomplete picture indeed of the Northmore household which did not include old Aunt Milly. An important figure she was and had been ever since the girls could remember. But in truth her connection with the family was of much older date than that. She had been born and reared a slave on the Kentucky plantation which had been the home of Dr. Northmore’s boyhood. He had left it earlier than she, having before the war gone out from the large circle of brothers to establish himself in his profession in a neighboring state. But when, in the changed times, the servants had scattered from the old place, Milly had made her way to the home of her favorite, and urged with many entreaties that she might fill a post of service there.

Dr. Northmore could not resist the appeal, nor his young wife his wish in the matter, and though the service had been a trying one at first to the energetic Northern girl, yet, as time went on, and children, one after another, were added to the household, she learned to set truer value on the faithful, affectionate servant, whose devotion nothing could tire; and now, when Milly was old and infirm, her place was as secure as it had been in her palmiest days. She herself had full confidence in her ability to fill it still, and her one fear for the future was that she might be forced to share it with one of those “transients” who rendered their service by the week,—a class for which her high-bred contempt knew no bounds.

Kate had not misjudged the effect of her stratagem on the simple old soul. It was a long time since her young ladies had done her the honor of eating at her own pine table, and Milly forgot the grief of the day in the zest of her hospitality, and accepted their praises for the feast she furnished, with a delight quite different from the forgiving dignity with which she had meant to pierce the hearts of her darlings.

“Well, yes, I did stir up a little cake for you,” she admitted, when Kate, after due admiration of the fresh and fragrant loaf, accused her of misrepresenting the extent of her supplies. “Laws, I knew you’d be wantin’ a bite of somethin’ afore you went to bed. It allers makes my stomach feel powerful empty to ride in one o’ them wagons, jouncin’ round in them straight-backed cheers.”

“And you must have named it for me, Aunt Milly,” said Kate, with her eyes on the cake.

This was an allusion to one of Milly’s culinary secrets, and she received it with a smile which fairly transfigured the dusky old face. She had her own theories of cake-making, theories which she maintained with the unanswerable logic of her own surpassing skill.

“You see, Miss Kate,” she had said years before, when the girl had come to the kitchen with a request to be instructed in the mysteries of the art, “there’s somethin’ curus about makin’ cake. It ain’t all in havin’ a good receipt, though it stan’s to reason if you don’t take the right things there’s no use puttin’ ’em together. An’ it ain’t all in the way you put ’em together neither, though I ’low that makes a heap o’ difference. Folks has their ’pinions, an’ there’s some that says you must take your hand to the mixin’, an’ some that says you must use a wooden spoon, an’ I knew one cook that would have it you must stir the batter all one way, or ’twould be plumb ruined. But I can’t say as I jest hold with any o’ them idees, nor yet with the notions folks has about the bakin’, though it’s true as you live, a body’s got to be mighty keerful on that p’int. Laws, I’ve known folks dassn’t let a cat run across the kitchen floor while the cake’s in the oven.

“I tell you, Miss Kate,” Milly had proceeded, growing more impressive, as the greatness of her subject loomed before her, “there’s a heap o’ things to be looked to in the makin’ o’ cake, but there’s somethin’ besides all them p’ints I’ve mentioned. It takes the right person to make it! There’s some that’s been ’lected to make cake an’ some that hasn’t. There ain’t no other doctrine to account for the luck folks has. I’ll show you my way, but I can’t tell beforehand how it’ll work with you. There’s one thing, though, I’ll jest say private between you’n me,” she added, lowering her voice to a mysterious whisper, “an’ I ain’t one to take up with no superstitious notions neither; when you want to make an extra fine cake, you name it for somebody that loves you jest as you’re shettin’ the oven door, an’ if you’ve made that cake all right, an’ if you ain’t deceived in that person, your cake’ll come out splendid.”

“But if you are deceived?” Kate had suggested solemnly.

“Then,” said Milly, lifting her finger, and shaking it with slow emphasis, “as sure’s you’re born that cake’ll fall in the pan an’ be sad. There can’t nothin’ on earth prevent it.”

“But that is such an uncertain way,” Kate had objected. “You can’t always tell whether or not a person loves you. Why don’t you name it for somebody that you love yourself? Then you could be sure.”

But Milly had shaken her head wisely. It was the nature of cake, as it was of love, to be uncertain, and she refused to reconstruct her charm.

All this had happened years before, but when, by some lucky turn of memory, Kate recalled it now, and suggested that this perfect specimen of cake had been baked under the inspiration of her own love for Milly, the last shadow of the old woman’s melancholy vanished. “Well, Honey,” she said radiantly, “I reckon I shouldn’t have missed it fur if I had.”

She was prepared now to enjoy to the full the account which the girls gave of the experiences at the farm, including everything of importance, from Kate’s exaltation on the machine to Morton Elwell’s capture of the doughnuts. Over the latter incident her eyes fairly rolled with delight, and she interrupted the narrator to exclaim, “That chile’s boun’ to make a powerful smart man. Puts me in mind of Mars Clay, your uncle, you know, what got to be kunnel in the army. That chile did have the most ’mazin’ faculty for comin’ roun’ when a body was cookin’, an’ the beatin’est way findin’ out where things was kep’ an’ helpin’ hisself that ever I did see. I never will forgit how he fooled your grandma one year ’bout the jelly. Ole Miss she allus put her jelly in glasses with lids to ’em. She had a closet full that year, an’ every glass of it would turn out slick an’ solid. Mars Clay, he foun’ he could turn the jelly out on the lid, an’ cut a slice off’m the bottom, an’ jist slide the jelly back again. I seed him do it one day, but I never let on, and your grandma she never foun’ out, but she ’lowed ’twas mighty strange how her jelly did shwink that year.”

She shook with glee at that remembrance, and Kate forgave Morton Elwell over again for outwitting her, since the act had been the means of giving her one more story of the old days. But Milly’s delight reached its climax when Kate told of the favor with which the various dishes had been received at dinner, and how Farmer Giles, after helping himself to the third piece of corn-bread, had declared it the best he ever tasted, to which she had replied that it ought to be; it was made by Aunt Milly’s own receipt.

“Bless your heart, chile,” cried the old woman; “you didn’t tell him that now, did you? You mustn’t make the old