VIII.
News.
As the honest efforts of poor Daph were crowned with success, she found herself abundantly able to provide for the physical wants of her master’s children. Three years of toil had rolled quickly away. Charlie had passed his fourth birth-day, and become a strong-willed, sturdy boy, while the slender figure of the fair Louise had grown and rounded, and the Rose had learned to bloom on the cheek of Captain Jones’s “Water-lily.”
Daph looked at her little ones with affectionate pride, and watched over them with the most tender care. She encouraged them to play in the small garden in the rear of their humble home, but in the street they were never seen. The garments she fashioned for them were neat and tidy, and the snowy aprons they always wore, were monuments of her skill as a laundress; but she was conscious of a something in their external appearance, which was not as it should be. About the manners of her charge, Daph was still more troubled. “Why you eat so, Miss Lou?” she would sometimes say. “How shall I eat, Daffy?” the child would reply. “Well, I jus don’t know,” poor Daph would answer, “but dere’s somewhat bout de way you childen do be, at de table, dat Daph don’t jus know how to spress it.”
More serious troubles than these by degrees came upon Daph, in her management. Charlie, though an affectionate, generous child, was hot-tempered and wilful, and when he resisted Daph’s authority, or raised his little hand to give an angry blow, the poor creature knew not what to do. In these scenes she generally triumphed, by the look of real distress which clouded her usually pleasant face, and brought Charlie, repentant to her arms.
With Louise, Daph had another difficulty. The child was usually gentle and submissive, but she seemed to pine for other companions, and a home different from that which Daph was able to provide for her.
The early lessons of piety which Louise had learned at her mother’s knee, had faded from her mind. Daph could remind the little girl to say her simple prayer at morning and evening, but she could not talk to her of the loving Saviour, or recount the wonders of the Gospel she had never read.
The little book, with the golden clasps, Daph had cherished with the utmost care. She knew it contained the secret which could bring peace and order to her little home, but its treasures she, in her ignorance, could not unlock.
Once she had ventured to ask Mrs. Ray to read a little to her from it, but she met with a short negative, and a cold, averted look.
Mary was almost as ignorant of letters as Daph herself. So the poor negro kept the precious book unopened, and awaited God’s time for leading her from darkness unto light.