"I always have designed to give that child her liberty when she is old enough; and if any thing prevents my doing so, I hope she will take it herself."
Take her liberty! What did that mean? Tidy laid up the saying, and pondered it in her heart.
Does any one of our little readers ask why Miss Matilda did not free the child then? Tidy's services paid her owner's board at her brother's house, and she couldn't afford to give away her very subsistence; COULD SHE?
CHAPTER IX. THE FIRST LESSON.
THE walk to school was a very delightful one, and as the trio trudged over the road from day to day, chattering like magpies, laughing, singing, shouting, and dancing in the exuberance of childish glee, all seemed equally light-hearted and joyous. Even the little slave who carried the books which she was unable to read, and the basket of dinner of which she could not by right partake, with a keen eye for the beautiful, and a sensitive heart to appreciate nature, could not apparently have been more happy, if her condition had been reversed, and she had been made the served instead of the servant.
The way for half a mile lay through a dense pine-wood,—the tall trees rising like stately pillars in some vast temple filled with balsamic incense, and floored with a clean, elastic fabric, smooth as polished marble, over which the little feet lightly and gayly tripped. In the central depths where the sun's rays never penetrated, and the fallen leaves lay so thickly on the ground, no flowers could grow, but on the outer edges spring lavished her treasures. The trailing arbutus added new fragrance to the perfumed air, frail anemones trembled in the wind, and violets flourished in the shade. The blood-root lifted its lily-white blossoms to the light, and the cream-tinted, fragile bells of the uvularia nestled by its side. Passing the wood and its embroidered flowery border, a brook ran across the road. The rippling waters were almost hidden by the bushes which grew upon its banks, where the wild honeysuckle and touch-me-not, laurels and eglantine, mingled their beautiful blossoms, and wooed the bee and humming-bird to their gay bowers. Over this stream a narrow bridge led directly to the school-house; but the homeward side was so attractive, that the children always tarried there until they saw the teacher on the step, or heard the little bell tinkling from the door. Tidy remained with them till the last minute, and there her bright face might invariably be seen when school was dismissed in the afternoon. A large flat rock between the woods and the flowery edges of Pine Run was the place of rendezvous.
One summer's morning they were earlier than usual, and emerging from the woods, warm and weary with their long walk, they threw themselves down upon the rock over which in the early day, the shadows of the trees refreshingly fell. Amelia turned her face toward the Run, and lulled by the gentle murmuring of the water, and the humming of the insects, was soon quietly asleep; Susie, with an apron full of burs, was making furniture for the play-house which they were arranging in a cleft of the rock; and Tidy, who carried the books, was busily turning over the leaves and amusing herself with the pictures.
"My sakes!" she exclaimed presently, "what a funny cretur! See that great lump on his back!" and she pointed with her finger to the picture of a camel. "Miss Susie! what IS that? Is it a lame horse?"
"Why no, Tidy, that's a camel; 'tisn't a horse at all. I was reading that very place yesterday,—let me see," and taking the book she read very intelligently a brief account of the wonderful animal.