Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/21

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gone to Richmond to go to school—the old idiot."

"Hi! I allers did like Mandy, but I ain't got no use fer dem niggers dat kin read 'n write. Readin' an' writin' is fer white folks."

"Shut up, you black rascal," roared the Colonel, nevertheless highly delighted. "Madam, may I present my daughter—Olivia, my child."

Olivia came up, and Mrs. Peyton kissed her affectionately, but not before a rapid glance which took in all there was of her.

"Like her sainted mother," began the Colonel, dramatically.

"Not a bit," briskly answered Mrs. Peyton. "A Berkeley all over, if ever I saw one. Child, I hope you are as nice as you are pretty."

"Nobody ever told me I wasn't nice," responded Olivia with a smile.

"And not spoiled by your foreign travels?"

"Not in the least."

Clang! Clang! Clang! goes the saddling bell.

"What do you think?" says Olivia laughing. "Papa has entered Dashaway. You know he is twelve years old, and as Petrarch says, he hasn't any wind left—but papa wouldn't listen to anybody."

"Yes, that's Tom Berkeley all over. Ah, my dear, I could tell you something that happened forty-two years ago, in which I promise you, I got the better of your father."

The horses by this time are coming out. They