“Well, then,” Alice said, “promise you will not. Your master would be very angry to know you watched him through the door, and then told what you saw. You must 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, her face brightening up as she continued, “But I can tell you who does—Miss Adah and Uncle Sam, over dar in the cornfield. They prays, both of ’em, and Sam, is powerful, I tell you. I hears him at the black folk’s meetin’. Hollers—oh! oh!” and Muggins stopped her ears, as if even the memory of Sam’s prayers were deafening; but if the ears stopped, the tongue was just as busy as the talkative child went on: “Sam prays for Mas’r Hugh, that God would fetch him right some day, and Miss Adah say God will, ’case she say he see and hear everyting. Mug don’t believe dat; can’t cheat dis chile, ’case if he hear and see, what made him hold still dat time Miss ’Lina licked me for telling Mas’r Harney how’t she done up her har at night in fourteen little braids, and slep’ in great big cap to make it look wavy like yourn. Does you twist yourn up in tails?” and as she had all along been aching to do, Muggins laid her hands on the luxuriant tresses, which Alice assured her were not done up in tails.
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 evenings to his mother, or did ’Lina play to them?
“More’n we wants, a heap!” and Muggins spoke scornfully. “We can’t bar them things 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 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.
“What time did he come home last night?” she asked, feeling more disappointed than she cared to confess at Muggin’s answer that, “he hadn’t come at all!”
Alice was but human, and it must be confessed that she had made her toilet that morning with a slight reference to Hugh’s eyes, wondering if he liked white, and wondering, too, if he liked flowers, when she placed the wax ball in her hair.