“We must just sit still and be thankful, until our work comes, Martha,” replied Miss Mason. “God will send it to us if we ask him. You had part of yours when Tom was sick, and this that he is doing is only an outgrowth from that.”
“This that Tom was doing” was a great deal. No one who saw him bending over Mr. Sutherland’s books hour after hour, copying the roughly-written accounts, would have imagined that his name was spoken everywhere over the plantation with praise and love. A very modest-looking colored boy he was, plain of face, with only those dark, earnest eyes to make him beautiful. A grave mouth, not much given to smiling, but which never wore any look of discontent or distrust. Hands used to work, but grown tender of late when the work had been only the long hours of writing. His feet were bare; there was no need of shoes and stockings, and there was no inclination for them, for Tom’s money went to buy what was needed at home; so they rested on the soft carpet of the library and the carpetless floor of Aunt Margaret’s cabin alike. To a stranger going into Mr. Sutherland’s house of a morning, and watching the still figure at the desk in the library, the contrast between the boy and his surroundings would have been striking. There was nothing fine or stylish about Tom. His dress was very plain, whole and neat, but coarse and ordinary. There was nothing elegant about him, yet all things around him were so.
You remember I told you about the library. There was everything there that money could buy and taste devise. Mr. Sutherland had taken this room for himself and Tom, soon after the boy had commenced to spend his time there, and they two were the only ones who occupied it. Not one bit of the prettiness was lost upon Tom. The little education he had received had fitted him, as education fits everybody, to admire and appreciate all that is worthy of praise. Tom liked the velvet library chairs better than the wooden ones at home; he preferred the hanging scarlet curtains to none at all; and he even chose rather to see the time by the French clock on the walnut bracket than by Aunt Margaret’s ancient time-piece.
He never showed this outside. He only thought it to himself, and he never felt out of place in the library. Nobody who knew him well thought so either. He seemed a part of the library to Mr. Sutherland, and in no way a contrast to any of the surroundings. The house-servants had learned to have a wonderful respect for him. Occasionally he had been obliged to ask of them some little service, and with considerable timidity he had done so, but he was always served with the utmost willingness and pleasure.
The first time he ever ventured this was one wet morning in August. Mr. Sutherland always ordered a fire when there was a rain-storm, even in the close, warm days of summer, and on this particular day he was expected home about ten o’clock, and had ordered a fire to be in readiness. The order, however, was forgotten, and when Tom came in to his morning’s work it was cold and cheerless, and the heavy summer rain was beating against the windows. Tom knew there would be trouble if Mr. Sutherland came home and found it so, but, on the other hand, he thought there might be more trouble if he were to go into the kitchen and order a fire made. He thought of it several minutes, and then, coming to the conclusion that it would better to stand the fire of Aunt Dinah’s anger than Mr. Sutherland’s, he quietly betook himself across the wide hall and appeared at the kitchen door.
“Laws! here’s Tom,” said Aunt Dinah, stopping her work to look at him. “What brings you here?” she added.
“Aunt Dinah,” he replied, “I’m sorry to trouble you, but there is no fire in the library, and Mr. Sutherland ordered one before he went away this morning. If you will be kind enough to give me the wood, I’ll make one, for I think Mr. Sutherland will be better pleased to find a cheerful room when he comes back.”
“Tom, you just turn round and go back to your writing,” said Aunt Dinah, indignantly. “I’m sorry as ever I can be that there’s no fire, but I’ll have one there in five minutes. I don’t know what these niggers means by disobeyin’ my orders. Here, you Jack!” she called out, catching sight of the youngest of her flock, “why didn’t you make the library fire? Here’s Tom got no fire to write by, and he your Sunday-school teacher, too. Ain’t you ’shamed of yourself.”
“Oh, Aunt Dinah, I don’t care for myself,” Tom replied. “Give me the wood and I’ll make it.”
“What do you ’spose Master Sutherland do to this chile if she let you make the fire? Go ’long with you and set your pen to scratchin’, and in five minutes there be a blaze goin’ up that chimney fit to take the roof off.”