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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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of her face, in every curve of the flexible lip, in every motion of her body; but in her eye was a deep, settled night of anguish,- an expression so hopeless and un- changing as to contrast fearfully with the scorn and pride expressed by her whole demeanor. Where she came from, or who she was, Tom did not know. The first he did know, she was walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim gray of the dawn. To the gang, however, she was known; for there was much looking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet apparent exultation among the miserable, ragged, half- starved creatures by whom she was surrounded. “Got to come to it, at last,- glad of it!” said one. “He! he! he!” said another; “you’ll know how good it is, Misse!” “We’ll see her work!” “Wonder if she’ll get a cutting up, at night, like the rest of us!” “I’d be glad to see her down for a flogging, I’ll bound!” said another. The woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with the same ex- pression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothing. Tom had always lived among re- fined and cultivated people, and he felt intuitively, from her air and bearing, that she belonged to that class; but how or why she could be fallen to those degrading circumstances, he could not tell. The woman neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though, all the way to the field, she kept close at his side. |
