“You should not hate any one, my child,” she said, while Muggins rejoined,
“I can’t help it—none of us can; she’s so—mean—and so—low-flung, Claib says. She hain’t any bizzens orderin’ us round nuther, and I will hate her!”
“But, Muggins, the Bible teaches us to love those who treat us badly, who are mean, as you say.”
“Who’s he?” and Muggins looked up quickly. “I never hearn tell of him afore, or, yes, I has. Thar’s an old wared out book in Mas’r Hugh’s chest, what he reads in every night, and oncet when I axes him what was it, he say ‘It’s a Bible, Mug.’ Dat’s what he calls me for short, Mug.”
There was a warm spot now in Alice’s heart for Hugh. A man who read his Bible every night could not be very bad, and she blessed Mug for the cheering news, little dreaming whose Bible it was Hugh read, or whose curl of yellow hair served him for a book mark. Mug’s prying eyes had ferreted that out, too, and delighted with so attentive a listener as Alice, she continued:
“Dat’s the thing, then, what teaches us to love the hatefuls. Mug don’t want to read him, though I reckon Mas’r Hugh done grow some better, for he hain’t been hoppin’ mad this good while, like he got at Miss ’Lina ’bout that dress and Miss Adah. He was awful then. He swared, he did.”
“Muggins, you must not tell me these things of your master. It is not right,” Alice interposed and Muggins replied,
“Well, then, I done took ’em back. He didn’t swared, but he do read the Bible, and he do kiss dat curl of yaller har what he keeps in it. I see him through the do’ and I hear him whisper ’bout Golden Har or somethin’ mighty like him.”
Alice was in a tremor of distress. She knew Muggins ought not to disclose Hugh’s secrets, and she saw no way to stop her except by sending her away, and this she was about to do when a new idea was suggested to her. Possibly she could keep her from repeating the story to others, so she asked if “Muggins had ever told this about the curl to any one else.”
“Nobody but Chloe, and she boxt my ears so that I done forgot till I see you, and that har of your’n makes me ’member the one Mas’r Hugh kissed—real smackin’ loud, so,” and Muggins illustrated on her own hand.