"Will you do what I bid you?"
Daisy was unable to speak for tears and perhaps for fear. The wrinkles on June's brow were strangely folded together with agitation; but nobody saw them.
"Will you sing for me next Sunday?" repeated Mrs. Randolph.
There was a struggle in the child's heart, as great almost as a child's heart can bear. The answer came, when it came, tremblingly: "I can't, mamma."
"You cannot?" said Mrs. Randolph.
"I can't, mamma."
The chastisement which followed was so severe, that June was moved out of all the habits of her life, to interfere in another's cause. The white-skinned race were no mark for trouble in June's mind; least of them all, her little charge. And if white skin was no more delicate in reality than dark skin, it answered to the lash much more speakingly.
"Missus, you'll kill her!" June said, using in her agitation a carefully disused form of speech; for June was a freed-woman.
A slight turn of the whip brought the lash sharply across her wrist, with the equally sharp words, "Mind your own business!"
A thrill went through the woman, like an electric spark, firing a whole life-train of feeling and memory; but the lines of her face never moved, and not the stirring of a muscle told what the touch had reached, besides a few nerves. She had done her charge no good by her officiousness, as June presently saw with grief. It was not till Mrs. Randolph had thoroughly satisfied her displeasure at being thwarted, and not until Daisy was utterly exhausted, that Mrs. Randolph stayed her hand.