“In a week there is plenty of time to arrange it,” she said, turning kindly to Pluto. “You can rest in peace about your Rosa’s boy. I will attend to it at once, and the traders shall never have him.”
Margeret drew a sharp, inward breath of relief.
“Yo’ mean you’ll buy him in?” and Pluto’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “Yo’ mean I’ll have a chance, maybe, to buy him back some day?”
“Not ‘some day,’ my good fellow,” and Judithe folded the paper she had been writing; “from the day he is bought from the Larue estate he will have his freedom. He will never be bought or sold again.”
The man stared at her, helplessly. No hope of his had ever reached so high as that! He tried to speak––failed––and his face was covered by his sleeve, as he went slowly out of the room.
“Don’t––don’t you think Pluto ain’t thankful, Madame Caron,” said the soft tones of Margeret, and they were not quite steady tones, either. Judithe did not look up for fear she should see tears in the melancholy, dark eyes; “that black boy just so thankful he can’t speak. He’ll worship you for what you’ve done for him, and well he may.”
There was a soft rustle beside her––the presence of lips on her hand, and then Judithe was alone in the room, and stronger than when she had entered it so short a while since, braced by the certainty that here, at least, she had been of use––practical use her own eyes could see, and all the evening a bird sang in her heart, and the grateful touch of the bondwoman’s lips gave her more pleasure than she could remember through the same tribute of any courtier.