So absorbed were Hugh and his mother, as not to hear the low howl of fear echoing through the hall, as Mug fled in terror from the dreaded new owner to whom Master Hugh was to sell her. Neither did they hear the cat-like tread with which Lulu glided past the door, taking the same direction Mug had gone, namely, to Alice Johnson’s room.
Lulu had been sitting by the open window at the end of the hall, and had heard every word of this letter, while Mug, sent by Chloe on some errand to Mrs. Worthington, had reached the threshold in time to hear all that was said about selling her. Instinctively both turned for protection to Alice, but Mug was the first to reach her. Throwing herself upon her knees and hiding her face in Alice’s dress she sobbed frantically,
“You buys me, Miss Alice. You give Mas’r Hugh six hundred dollars for me, so’t he can get Miss ’Lina’s weddin’ finery. I’ll be good, I will. I’ll learn de Lord’s prar, ebery word on’t; will you, Miss Alice, say?”
In amazement Alice tried to wrest her muslin dress from the child’s grasp, asking what she meant.
“I know, I’ll tell,” and Lulu scarcely less excited, but more capable of restraining herself, advanced into the room, and ere the bewildered Alice could well understand what it all meant, or make more than a feeble attempt to stop her, she had repeated rapidly the entire contents of ’Lina’s letter, omitting nothing of any consequence, but, as was quite natural, dwelling longest upon the engagement, as that was the point which particularly concerned herself and Muggins.
Too much amazed at first to speak, Alice sat motionless, then rallying her scattered senses, she said to Lulu,
“I am sorry that you told me this, sorry you knew it to tell. It was wrong in you to listen, and you must not repeat it to any one else. Will you promise?”
Lulu would do anything which Alice asked, and she gave the required promise, then with terror in every lineament of her face she said,
“But, Miss Alice, must I be Miss ’Lina’s waiting-maid? Will Master Hugh permit it?”
Alice did not know Hugh as well as we do, and in her heart there was a fear lest for the sake of peace he might be overruled, resolving in her mind that Lulu and Muggins should change owners ere the capricious ’Lina’s return, and endeavoring as far as she could to quiet both. It was no easy task, however, to soothe Muggins, and only Alice’s direct avowal that if possible she would herself become her purchaser, checked her cries at all, but the moment this was said her sobbing ceased, and Alice was able to question Lulu as to whether it was really Hugh who had read the letter.