Christie loved books; and the attic next her own was full of them.  To this store she found her way by a sort of instinct as sure as that which leads a fly to a honey-pot, and, finding many novels, she read her fill.  This amusement lightened many heavy hours, peopled the silent house with troops of friends, and, for a time, was the joy of her life.

Hepsey used to watch her as she sat buried in her book when the day’s work was done, and once a heavy sigh roused Christie from the most exciting crisis of “The Abbot.”

“What’s the matter?  Are you very tired, Aunty?” she asked, using the name that came most readily to her lips.

“No, honey; I was only wishin’ I could read fast like you does.  I’s berry slow ‘bout readin’ and I want to learn a heap,” answered Hepsey, with such a wistful look in her soft eyes that Christie shut her book, saying briskly: 

“Then I’ll teach you.  Bring out your primer and let’s begin at once.”

“Dear chile, it’s orful hard work to put learnin’ in my ole head, and I wouldn’t ’cept such a ting from you only I needs dis sort of help so bad, and I can trust you to gib it to me as I wants it.”

Then in a whisper that went straight to Christie’s heart, Hepsey told her plan and showed what help she craved.

For five years she had worked hard, and saved her earnings for the purpose of her life.  When a considerable sum had been hoarded up, she confided it to one whom she believed to be a friend, and sent him to buy her old mother.  But he proved false, and she never saw either mother or money.  It was a hard blow, but she took heart and went to work again, resolving this time to trust no one with the dangerous part of the affair, but when she had scraped together enough to pay her way she meant to go South and steal her mother at the risk of her life.

“I don’t want much money, but I must know little ‘bout readin’ and countin’ up, else I’ll get lost and cheated.  You’ll help me do dis, honey, and I’ll bless you all my days, and so will my old mammy, if I ever gets her safe away.”

With tears of sympathy shining on her cheeks, and both hands stretched out to the poor soul who implored this small boon of her, Christie promised all the help that in her lay, and kept her word religiously.

From that time, Hepsey’s cause was hers; she laid by a part of her wages for “ole mammy,” she comforted Hepsey with happy prophecies of success, and taught with an energy and skill she had never known before.  Novels lost their charms now, for Hepsey could give her a comedy and tragedy surpassing any thing she found in them, because truth stamped her tales with a power and pathos the most gifted fancy could but poorly imitate.

The select receptions upstairs seemed duller than ever to her now, and her happiest evenings were spent in the tidy kitchen, watching Hepsey laboriously shaping A’s and B’s, or counting up on her worn fingers the wages they had earned by months of weary work, that she might purchase one treasure,—­a feeble, old woman, worn out with seventy years of slavery far away there in Virginia.