Uncle Tom's cabin / Хижина дяди Тома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

When the voices died into silence, she rose and crept stealthily away. Pale, shivering, with rigid features and compressed lips, she looked an entirely altered being from the soft and timid creature she had been hitherto. She moved cautiously along the entry, paused one moment at her mistress’ door, and raised her hands in mute appeal to Heaven, and then turned and glided into her own room. It was a quiet, neat apartment, on the same floor with her mistress. There was the pleasant sunny window, where she had often sat singing at her sewing; there a little case of books, and various little fancy articles, ranged by them, the gifts of Christmas holidays; there was her simple wardrobe in the closet and in the drawers: – here was, in short, her home; and, on the whole, a happy one it had been to her.

But there, on the bed, lay her slumbering boy, his long curls falling negligently around his unconscious face, his rosy mouth half open, his little fat hands thrown out over the bed-clothes, and a smile spread like a sunbeam over his whole face.

“Poor boy! poor fellow!” said Eliza; “they have sold you! but your mother will save you yet!”

No tear dropped over that pillow; in such straits as these, the heart has no tears to give, – it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence. She took a piece of paper and pencil, and wrote, hastily,

“O, Missis! dear Missis! don’t think me ungrateful, – don’t think hard of me, any way, – I heard all you and master said to-night.

I am going to try to save my boy – you will not blame me! God bless and reward you for all your kindness!”

Hastily folding and directing this, she went to a drawer and made up a little package of clothing for her boy, which she tied with a handkerchief firmly round her waist; and, so fond is a mother’s remembrance, that, even in the terrors of that hour, she did not forget to put in the little package one or two of his favorite toys, reserving a gayly painted parrot to amuse him, when she should be called on to awaken him.

It was some trouble to arouse the little sleeper; but, after some effort, he sat up, and was playing with his bird, while his mother was putting on her bonnet and shawl.

“Where are you going, mother?” said he, as she drew near the bed, with his little coat and cap.

His mother drew near, and looked so earnestly into his eyes, that he at once divined that something unusual was the matter.