All this was uttered with volubility, and in a tone between laughing and crying.
'Well, Adeline,' said Glenmurray when she had ended, 'you did not throw away your kindness on an unworthy and ungrateful object; so I am quite reconciled to the loss of the pine-apple; and I will tell your honest friend here the story,—to show her, as she has a tender heart herself, the greatness of the sacrifice you made for her sake.'
Adeline begged him to desist; but he went on; and the mulatto could not keep herself quiet on the chair while he related the circumstance.
'And did she do dat to save me?' she passionately exclaimed: 'Angel woman! I should have let poor man go to prison, before disappoint my William!'
'And did you forgive her immediately?' said Berrendale.
'Yes, certainly.'
'Well, that was heroic too,' returned he.
'And no one but Glenmurray would have been so heroic, I believe,' said Adeline.
'But, lady, you break my heart,' cried the mulatto, 'if you not take my service. Mr William and me, too poor to live togedder of some year perhaps. Here, child, tawny boy, down on knees, and vow wid me to be faithful and grateful to this our mistress, till our last day; and never to forsake her in sickness or in sorrow! I swear dis to my great God:—and now say dat after me.' She then clasped the little boy's hands, bade him raise his eyes to heaven, and made him repeat what she had said, ending it with 'I swear dis, to my great God.'
There was such an affecting solemnity in this action, and in the mulatto such a determined enthusiasm of manner incapable of being controlled, that Adeline, Glenmurray, and Berrendale observed what passed in respectful silence: and when it was over, Glenmurray said, in a voice of emotion, 'I think, Adeline, we must accept this good creature's offer; and as nurse grows lazy and saucy, we had better part with her: and as for your young knight there,' (the tawny boy had by this time nestled himself close to Adeline, who, with no small emotion, was playing with his woolly curls,) 'we must send him to school; for, my good woman, we are not so poor as you imagine.'