"Well," Alice said, "be a good girl, Muggins. God will love you if you do. Do you ever pray?"
"More times I do, and more times when I'se sleepy I don't," was Muggins' reply.
Here was a spot where Alice might do good; this half-heathen, but sprightly, African child needed her, and she began already to get an inkling of her mission to Kentucky. She was pleased with Muggins, and suffered the little dusky hands to caress her curls as long as they pleased, while she questioned her of the bookcase and its contents, whose was it, 'Lina's or Hugh's?
"Mas'r Hugh's, in course. Miss 'Lina can't read!" was Muggins' reply, which Alice fully understood.
'Lina was no reader, while Hugh was, it might be, and she continued to speak of him. Did he read much, ever evenings to his mother, or did 'Lina play often to them?"
"More'n we wants, a heap!" and Muggins spoke scornfully. "We can't bar them rang-tang-em-er-digs she thumps out. Now, we likes Mas'r Hugh's the best—got good voice, sing Dixie, oh, splendid! Mas'r Hugh loves flowers, too. Tend all them in the garden."
"Did he?" and Alice spoke with great animation, for she had supposed that 'Lina's, or at least Mrs. Worthington's hands had been there.
But it was Hugh, all Hugh, and in spite of what Muggins had said concerning his aversion to her coming there, she felt a great desire to see him. She could understand in part why he should be angry at not having been consulted, but he was over that, she was sure from what Aunt Eunice said, and if he were not, it behooved her to try her best to remove any wrong impression he might have formed of her. "He shall like me," she thought; "not as he must like that golden-haired maiden whose existence this sprite of a negro has discovered, but as a friend, or sister," and a softer light shone in Alice's blue eyes, as she foresaw in fancy Hugh gradually coming to like her, to be glad that she was there, and to miss her when she was gone.