The next day came bright and beautiful, and Harrington not appearing as he commonly did, Muriel went out to take her early morning walk alone. While she was out, he arrived and at once went up to the chamber where Roux was confined.
It was not more than six o’clock, but Roux was up and dressed. He sat in a chair, and Tugmutton, squatted on a stool by his side, was reading aloud to him from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Tugmutton’s reading was a treat to hear. It was, when the text was at all serious, what is called at the theatres, spouting, and spouting of the most grandiloquent order, at that. Accompanied, also, by much and varied action of his big paw, and interspersed not only with explanations and comments of his own, but whenever he came to anything that particularly pleased him, with chirrups and guffaws of goblin laughter, and bobbings and waggings of his big head and blobber cheeks over the page, the effect was, to say the least of it, peculiar. On the present occasion, the fat Puck happened to have arrived at a chapter highly congenial to his special views on the Slavery Question—to wit: that wherein George Harris and his fellow runaways fight the hunters of men; and Roux was at some trouble to detach the sense of the narrative from the luxurious overgrowth of dissertation, interpolation, exclamation, cachinnation, and general outward limbs and flourishes wherewith Tugmutton was embellishing it. Having got to the point where Phineas topples the slave-hunter down the rocks, the delighted squab leaned back and gave vent to an uproarious guffaw, and in the midst of this, while Roux, with a faint and curious smile on his simple, dark face, was listening, Harrington’s knock was heard at the entrance.
Tugmutton instantly grew sober, and sat staring with his great white eyes at the door, as Roux crossed to open it.
“Good morning, Mr. Roux,” said Harrington, entering, and shaking hands with him. “How are you?”
“Firs’rate, thank ye, Mr. Harrington,” replied the smiling Roux, bowing humbly, and shutting the door again.
The intuitive Tugmutton, instantly gathering from Harrington’s slightly distraught air, that something was the matter, remained perfectly motionless, squatting on his low stool with the book in his hands, and staring open-mouthed at him, with a look of preternatural curiosity on his fat face.
“Sit down, Roux,” said Harrington, dropping into a chair without noticing the boy, and gazing absently around the room.
Roux resumed his chair, and with his hand fumbling over his mouth as was usual with him, rolled his eyes timidly about the room.
“Roux, I’ve got news to tell you,” faltered Harrington, smiling. “Good news. What would be the best news you could hear?”
Roux smiled faintly, and still fumbling around his mouth with his hand, while his eyes continued to wander, he appeared to hesitate.