"
The dear old woman followed us again until we found a clerk in a branch
ticket-office, who picked out a long green slip from a library of
tickets, punched it with the greatest care with a pair of steel nippers,
and slipped it into an official envelope labelled: "K.C. Pineyville,
Ky. 8 P.M."
With this tightly grasped in her wrinkled brown hand, together with
another package of Marny's many times in excess of the stage fare of
thirty-six miles and which she slipped into her capacious bosom, Aunt
Chloe "made her manners" with the slightest dip of a courtesy and left
us with the remark:
"Sha'n't nothin' tech her, honey; gwinter stick right close to her till
de steam-cars git to movin', I'll be over early in de mawnin' an' let ye
know. Doan' worry, honey; ain't nothin' gwinter happen to her arter I
gits my han's on her."
When I came down to breakfast, Aunt Chloe was waiting for me in the
hall. She looked like the old woman in the fairy-tale in her short black
dress that came to her shoe-tops, snow-white apron and headkerchief,
covered by a close-fitting nun-like hood--only the edge of the
handkerchief showed--making her seem the old black saint that she was.
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