So absorbed were Hugh and his mother in that letter as not to hear the
howl of fear echoing through the hall, as Mug fled in terror from the
dreaded new owner to whom Master Hugh was to sell her. Neither did they
hear the catlike tread with which Lulu glided past the door, taking the
same direction Mug had gone, namely, to Alice Johnson's room.
Lulu had been sitting by the open window at the end of the hall, and had
heard every word of this letter, while Mug had reached the threshold in
time to hear all that was said about selling her. Instinctively both
turned for protection to Alice, but Mug was the first to reach her.
Throwing herself upon her knees, she sobbed frantically.
"You buys me, Miss Alice. You give Mar's Hugh six hundred dollars for
me, so't he can get Miss 'Lina's weddin' finery. I'll be good, I will.
I'll learn do Lord's Prar, an' de Possums Creed, ebery word on't; will
you, Miss Alice, say?"
Alice tried to wrest her muslin dress from the child's grasp, asking
what she meant.
"I know, I'll tell," and Lulu, scarcely less excited, but far more
capable of restraining herself, advanced into the room, and ere the
bewildered Alice could well understand what it all meant, or make more
than a feeble attempt to stop her, she had repeated rapidly the entire
contents of 'Lina's letter.
Too much amazed at first to speak, Alice sat motionless, then she said
to Lulu.
"I am sorry that you told me this. It was wrong in you to listen, and
you must not repeat it to any one else. Will you promise?"
Lulu gave the required promise, then with terror in every lineament of
her face she said: "But, Miss Alice, must I be Miss 'Lina's waiting maid? Will Master Hugh
permit it?"
Alice did not know Hugh as well as we do, and in her heart there was a
fear lest for the sake of peace he might be overruled, so she replied
evasively. It was no easy task to sooth Muggins, and only Alice's direct
avowal, that if possible she would herself become her purchaser, checked
her cries at all, but the moment this was said her sobbing ceased, and
Alice was able to question Lulu as to whether Hugh had read the letter.
"He must be rational," she said, "but it is so sudden," and a painful
uneasiness crept over her as she recalled the look which several times
had puzzled her so much.
"You can go now," Alice said, sitting down to reflect as to her next
best course.
Adah must go to Terrace Hill at once, and Alice's must be the purse
which defrayed all the expense of fitting her up. If ever Alice felt
thankful to God for having made her rich in this world's goods, it was
that morning. Only the previous night she had heard from Colonel Tiffton
that the day was fixed for the sale of his house and that Nell had
nearly cried herself into a second fever at the thoughts of leaving
Mosside. "Then there's Rocket," the colonel had said, "Hugh cannot buy
him back, and he's so bound up in him too, poor Hugh, poor all of us,"
and the colonel had wrung Alice's hand, hurrying off ere she had time to
suggest what all along had been in her mind.