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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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heavy sleep. When she heard the name of the place called out, she hastily laid the child down in a little cradle formed by the hollow among the boxes, first carefully spreading under it her cloak; and then she sprung to the side of the boat, in hopes that, among the various hotel-walters who thronged the wharf, she might see her husband. In this hope, she pressed forward to the front rails, and, stretching far over them, strained her eyes intently on the moving heads on the shore, and the crowd pressed in between her and the child. “Now’s your time,” said Haley, taking the sleeping child up, and handing him to the stranger. “Don’t wake him up, and set him to crying, now; it would make a devil of a fuss with the gal.” The man took the bundle carefully, and was soon lost in the crowd that went up the wharf. When the boat, creaking, and groaning, and puffing, had loosed from the wharf, and was beginning slowly to strain herself along, the woman returned to her old seat. The trader was sitting there,- the child was gone! “Why, why,- where?” she began, in bewildered surprise. “Lucy,” said the trader, “your child’s gone; you may as well know it first as last. You see, I know’d you couldn’t take him down south; and I got a chance to sell him to a first-rate family, that’ll raise him better than you can.” The trader had arrived at that stage of Christian and political perfection which has been recommended by some preachers and politicians of the north, lately in which he had completely overcome every humane weakness and prejudice. His |
