Most er de niggers change' dey names after
de wah, but I kept de ole fambly name I wuz raise' by. It wuz good
'nuff fer me, suh; dey ain' none better."
"Oh, papa," said little Phil, unable to restrain himself longer, "he
must be some kin to us; he has the same name, and belongs to the same
family, and you know you called him 'Uncle.'"
The old Negro had dropped his hat, and was staring at the colonel and
the little boy, alternately, with dawning amazement, while a look of
recognition crept slowly into his rugged old face.
"Look a hyuh, suh," he said tremulously, "is it?--it can't be!--but
dere's de eyes, an' de nose, an' de shape er de head--why, it _must_
be my young Mars Henry!"
"Yes," said the colonel, extending his hand to the old man, who
grasped it with both his own and shook it up and down with
unconventional but very affectionate vigour, "and you are my boy
Peter; who took care of me when I was no bigger than Phil here!"
This meeting touched a tender chord in the colonel's nature, already
tuned to sympathy with the dead past of which Peter seemed the only
survival. The old man's unfeigned delight at their meeting; his
retention of the family name, a living witness of its former standing;
his respect for the dead; his "family pride," which to the
unsympathetic outsider might have seemed grotesque; were proofs of
loyalty that moved the colonel deeply. When he himself had been a
child of five or six, his father had given him Peter as his own boy.
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