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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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“How can you propose it?” said Marie. “St. Clare, you really are inconsider- ate. So nervous as I am, the least breath disturbs me; and a strange hand about me would drive me absolutely frantic. If Mammy felt the interest in me she ought to, she’d wake easier,- of course, she would. I’ve heard of people who had such de- voted servants, but it never was my luck;” and Marie sighed. Miss Ophelia had listened to this conversation with an air of shrewd, obser- vant gravity; and she still kept her lips tightly compressed, as if determined fully to ascertain her longitude and position, before she committed herself. “Now, Mammy has a sort of goodness,” said Marie; “she’s smooth and re- spectful, but she’s selfish at heart. Now, she never will be done fidgeting and wor- rying about that husband of hers. You see, when I was married and came to live here, of course, I had to bring her with me, and her husband my father couldn’t spare. He was a blacksmith, and, of course, very necessary; and I thought and said, at the time, that Mammy and he had better give each other up, as it wasn’t likely to be convenient for them ever to live together again. I wish, now, I’d in- sisted on it, and married Mammy to somebody else; but I was foolish and indul- gent, and didn’t want to insist. I told Mammy, at the time, that she mustn’t ever expect to see him more than once or twice in her life again, for the air of father’s place doesn’t agree with my health, and I can’t go there; and I advised her to take up with somebody else; but no-she wouldn’t. Mammy has a kind of obstinacy about her, in spots, that everybody don’t see as I do.” “Has she children?” said Miss Ophelia. |
