“Umph!” said the young man, dropping himself into the arm-chair and falling into deep thought, from which he was aroused by the voice of Kate, saying—
“Carl, don’t sit down in your wet clothes; take those on the chair, and go in the shed and put them on. And make haste, please, Carl, because supper is nearly ready, and the gentlemen up stairs must be hungry.”
The young man arose, with a heavy sigh, saying—
“I’ll only change my jacket, that I can do here. Oh! Kate!” he continued, as he divested himself of his wet jacket, and drew on the other—“Oh! Kate! what between one thing and another this is no home for you! Indeed, indeed, every morning I go away from you with a heavy heart, and all day long I can hardly work for the dread that’s on my mind about you. If I could only find a place for you to wait on some lady, or to nurse a baby—but, Lord! what with the niggers there is never a place to be got here for a poor white girl.”
“Oh, Carl, if you could get me the best place in the world—even a place to sew—I wouldn’t leave him. Why, Carl, it would break his heart. He would grieve himself to death!”
“And better for him that he should be dead! And better for you and all concerned!”
“Oh, don’t say so, Carl! Don’t say so! Come and look at him, and let the sight soften your heart to him,” said the girl, taking the youth’s hand, and drawing him to the bedside. “Look, now, at that poor old wrinkled face—it has not got very long to live, anyhow—and see the two or three thin, white hairs on his temples—and see the poor, poor withered hands—so helpless! Oh! I think it is all so pitiful. And now see, he is asleep, but how much trouble there is on his poor old face—no, no! don’t say hard things of him, it cuts me to the heart! And, Carl, no matter how bad his fit may be, he never offers to hurt me or anything else. Only terror and horror is all that is on him! He is a gentle, harmless, poor old man. And I always pity him like I pity any one very ill.”
“Kate! I dare say you think this is all tender-heartedness, and you give yourself a great deal of credit for it! But I tell you it’s nothing but weakness. And it may be the ruin of you, too, before long. And now I tell you, I’m going to get a place for you, if I can. Yes, and make you go to it, too. I can do without you—that is, I must do without you! I can get the breakfast before I go away in the morning. And I can leave something for the old man’s dinner, and come home time enough in the evening to get his supper! And to-morrow I am going down to the turnpike gate to thrash Scroggings, and bring your bonnet home. And I’ll tell him if ever he lets the old man have any more liquor, I’ll kick him round his groggery till he hasn’t got a whole bone left in his body. Yes, and I’ll do it, too!”
Kate was placing the supper on the table, but she turned, with the same expression of countenance with which she had stopped Fairfax at the foot of the stairs, and said—
“I should be very sorry for any violence from you, Carl. But of one thing be sure—do what you may, I will never, never leave our grandfather!”