She kept the silver spoons under the feather-bed for many a
day, and they all ate with the pewter ones; but finally suspicion was
allayed if not destroyed. The Dickey boy had shown himself trustworthy
in several instances. Once he was sent on a test errand to the store,
and came home promptly with the right change. The silver spoons
glittered in the spoon-holder on the table, and Miss Elvira wore her
gold watch and her gold breastpin.
"I begin to take a good deal more stock in that boy," Mrs. Rose told her
brother Hiram.
"He ain't very lively, but he works real smart; he ain't saucy, and I
ain't known of his layin' hands on a thing."
But the Dickey boy, although he had won some confidence and good
opinions, was, as Mrs. Rose said, not very lively. His face, as he did
his little tasks, was as sober and serious as an old man's. Everybody
was kind to him, but this poor little alien felt like a chimney-sweep in
a queen's palace. Mrs. Rose, to a Dickey boy, was almost as impressive
as a queen. He watched with admiration and awe this handsome, energetic
woman moving about the house in her wide skirts. He was overcome with
the magnificence of Miss Elvira's afternoon silk, and gold watch; and
dainty little Willy Rose seemed to him like a small prince. Either the
Dickey boy, born in a republican country, had the original instincts of
the peasantry in him, and himself defined his place so clearly that it
made him unhappy, or his patrons did it for him.
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