Liz had a tall, well-developed figure, which her plain print dress showed off to perfection. Her skin was clear, and soft, and white, and her abundant fair hair was tucked smoothly away behind her ears, and twisted into a knot at the back of her head. Her grey eyes beamed with a tender, kindly light, that had no power to conceal her feelings, and her firm, well-shaped mouth showed firmness and decision. In fact, she was a typical English woman, with rather a majestic bearing about her, as if she knew her power and rejoiced in it. But, above all, she was a woman to love and trust in,—one who would never tell a lie nor betray a friend, and yet who, once convinced that her own trust had been betrayed, would stamp the image of the offender from her heart, if she died under the process. As the negresses caught sight of her again, they were startled to see the tears upon her cheeks, hardly believing they were shed for them.
‘Missy feeling ill?’ ‘Missy like a little wine?’ ‘I go calling Massa to see Missy?’
‘No! No! What are you talking about? I am as well as possible!’ cried Liz, hastily brushing her tears away. ‘I was only thinking.’
‘Ah, Missy,’ said one poor mother, regarding an attenuated morsel of humanity which lay just breathing and no more across her lap, ‘I thinkin’ my little Sambo never run about again!’
‘Don’t lose heart, Chrissie,’ replied Liz, in her grave, sweet voice, as she knelt down and laid her hand on the baby’s forehead. ‘He is very weak, poor little fellow, but so long as he can eat, there is hope for him. I will change his medicine, and perhaps we shall have the rain by to-morrow. A few cool nights would set him up again.’
‘Ah! Missy very good to say so, but we shall have plenty more weeks hot weather yet. Poor little Sambo under ground before the rain sets in.’
‘And my poor girl can’t stand no ways!’ cried another; ‘and Rosa’s boy die this afternoon.’
‘Oh, what can I do—what can I do for you all?’ exclaimed Liz, with her hands to her head.
At this moment, the group in the Doctor’s bungalow was augmented by a fresh arrival. This was Rosa, the yellow girl, who rushed in like a whirlwind, with her dead child in her arms. Liz had taken an interest in this girl, but it was one which Rosa strongly resented. Her child was born out of wedlock, and the gentle remonstrances on her conduct which the Doctor’s daughter had urged upon her, had been taken by the uneducated creature as an insult rather than a kindness. Her poor little dead Carlo had been tended as carefully as any of Liz’s other patients, but the bereaved mother chose to think it otherwise, as she burst in upon them.
‘He is dead!’ she cried frantically, as she almost flung the body upon the table. ‘And now, perhaps you will be satisfied, Miss Lizzy. Now you will be glad to think there is one bastard child less on my massa’s plantation, and that I have nothing—nothing left to remind me of my lover who has sailed away to America.’