In a very graceful manner ’Lena accepted the invitation saying that “she always preferred riding on horse back, but as the pony which she usually rode had recently been sold, she would be content to go in any other way.”
“Fleetfoot sold! what’s that for?” asked Anna; and her mother replied, “We’ve about forty horses on our hands now, and as Fleetfoot was seldom used by any one except ’Lena, your father thought we couldn’t afford to keep him.”
She did not dare tell the truth of the matter, and say that ever since the morning when ’Lena rode to Woodlawn with Durward, Fleetfoot’s fate had been decreed. Repeatedly had she urged the sale upon her husband, who, wearied with her importunity, at last consented, selling him to a neighboring planter, who had taken him away that very day.
“That’s smart,” said John Jr. looking at his father, who had not spoken. “What is ’Lena going to ride, I should like to know.”
’Lena pressed his arm to keep him still, but he would not heed her. “Isn’t there plenty of feed for Fleetfoot?”
“Certainly,” answered his father, compelled now to speak; “plenty of feed, but Fleetfoot was getting old and sometimes stumbled. Perhaps we’ll get ’Lena a better and younger horse.”
This was said in a half timid way, which brought the tears to ’Lena’s eyes, for at the bottom of it all she saw her aunt, who sat looking into the glowing grate, apparently oblivious to all that was passing around her.
“That reminds me of Christmas gifts,” said Durward, anxious to change the conversation. “I wonder how many of us will get one?”
Ere there was any chance for an answer a servant appeared at the door, asking Mrs. Livingstone for some medicine for old Aunt Polly, the superannuated negress, who will be remembered as having nursed Mrs. Nichols during her attack of rheumatism, and for whom grandma had conceived a strong affection. For many days she had been very ill, causing Mrs. Livingstone to wonder “what old niggers wanted to live for, bothering everybody to death.”
The large stock of abolitionism which Mrs. Nichols had brought with her from Massachusetts was a little diminished by force of habit, but the root was there still, in all its vigor, and since Aunt Polly’s illness she had been revolving in her mind the momentous question, whether she would not be most guilty if Polly were suffered to die in bondage.