'Is that his wife?' said Adeline. 'Yes, and my mammy,' said the tawny boy, looking up in her face, 'and she so ill and sorry.'
'Yes, unhappy creatures,' replied her informant, 'and they have known great trouble; and now, just as they had got a little money together, William fell ill, and in doctor's stuff Savanna (that's the mulatto's name) has spent all the money she had earned, as well as her husband's; and now she is ill herself, and I am sure William's going to jail will kill her. And a hard-hearted, wicked wretch Mr Davis is, to arrest him—that he is—not but what it is his due, I cannot say but it is—but, poor souls! he'll die, and she'll die, and then what will become of their poor little boy?'
The tawny boy all this time was standing, crying, by Adeline's side, and had twisted his fingers in her gown, while her heart sympathized most painfully in the anguish of the mulatto woman. 'What is the amount of the sum for which he is taken up?' said Adeline.
'Oh! trifling: but Mr Davis owes him a grudge, and so will not wait any longer. It is in all only ten pounds; and he says if they will pay part he will wait for the rest; but then he knows they could as well pay all as part.'
Adeline, shocked at the knowledge of a distress which she was not able to remove, was turning away as the woman said this, when she felt that the little boy pulled her gown gently, as if appealing to her generosity; while a surly-looking man, who was the creditor himself, forcing a passage through the crowd, said, 'Why, bring him along, and have done with it; here is a fuss to make indeed about that idle dog, and that ugly black toad!'
Adeline till then had not recollected that she was a mulatto; and this speech, reflecting so brutally on her colour,—a circumstance which made her an object of greater interest to Adeline,—urged her to step forward to their joint relief with an almost irresistible impulse; especially when another man reproached the fellow for his brutality, and added, that he knew them both to be hard-working, deserving persons. But to disappoint Glenmurray of his promised pleasure was impossible; and having put sixpence in the tawny boy's hand, she was hastening to the fruiterer's, when the crowd, who were following William and the mulatto to the jail, whither the bailiffs were dragging rather than leading him, fell back to give air to the poor man, who had fainted on Savanna's shoulder, and seemed on the point of expiring—while she, with an expression of fixed despair, was gazing on his wan cheek.
Adeline thought on Glenmurray's danger, and shuddered as she beheld the scene; she felt it but a too probable anticipation of the one in which she might soon be an actor.
At this moment a man observed, 'If he goes to prison he will not live two days, that every one may see;' and the mulatto uttered a shriek of agony.
Adeline felt it to her very soul; and, rushing forward, 'Sir, sir,' she exclaimed to the unfeeling creditor, 'if I were to give you a guinea now, and promise you two more a fortnight hence, would you release this poor man for the present?'
'No: I must have three guineas this moment,' replied he. Adeline sighed, and withdrew her hand from her pocket. 'But were Glenmurray here, he would give up his indulgence, I am sure, to save the lives of, probably two fellow-creatures,' thought Adeline: 'and he would not forgive me if I were to sacrifice such an opportunity to the sole gratification of his palate.'—But then again, Glenmurray eagerly expecting her with the promised treat, so gratifying to the feverish taste of sickness, seemed to appear before her, and she turned away; but the eyes of the mulatto, who had heard her words, and had hung on them breathless with expectation, followed her with a look of such sad reproach for the disappointment which she had occasioned her, and the little boy looked up so wistfully in her face, crying, 'Poor fader, and poor mammy!' that Adeline could not withstand the force of the appeal; but almost exclaiming 'Glenmurray would upbraid me if I did not act thus,' she gave the creditor the three guineas, paid the bailiffs their demand, and then made her way through the crowd, who respectfully drew back to give her room to pass, saying, 'God bless you, lady! God bless you!'