THE CROMPTONS



for Eloise, and sure that nothing would ever change
the young girl's friendship for herself, no matter what
her position might be. Many others called that day
and the following Monday, and Eloise received them
with a dignity of which she was herself unconscious,
and which they charged to the Crompton blood.
Howard, who was still suffering from a severe cold,
kept his room until Jack returned. Then he came
out with a feeling of humiliation, not so much that
he had lost the estate, as that he had thought to burn
the paper which took it from him. This feeling,
however, gradually wore off under Jack's geniality
and Eloise's friendliness, and Amy's sweetness of
manner as she called him Cousin Howard, and said
she hoped he would look upon Crompton as his
home. Then he was to have twenty thousand dol-
lars when matters were adjusted, and that was some-
thing to one who, when he came to Crompton, had
scarcely a dollar. His visit had paid, and, though
he was not the master, he was the favored guest and
cousin, who, at Eloise's request, took charge of af-
fairs after Jack went home to New York.
  Early in December Jake came from the South, and
was welcomed warmly by Amy and Eloise. To the
servants he was a great curiosity, with his negro
dialect and quaint ways, but no one could look at
the old man's honest face without respecting him.
Even Peter, who detected about him an ordor of the
bad tobacco which had so offended his nostrils in the
letters to his master, and who on general principles
disliked negroes, was disarmed of his prejudices by
Jake's confiding simplicity and thorough goodness.
Taking him one day for a drive around the country



380