Page:A New England Tale.djvu/141

130 The bed-clothes had been hastily stripped from the bed and strewed on the floor, and Bet stood at the open window with the bed in her right hand. She had, by a sudden exertion of her strength, made an enormous rent in the well-wove home-made tick, and was now quite leisurely shaking out the few feathers that still adhered to it. In her left hand she held a broom, which she dexterously brandished, to defend herself from the interference of Sukey, the coloured servant girl, who stood panic-struck and motionless; her dread of her mistress' vengeance impelling her forward; and her fear of the moody maniac operating upon her locomotive powers, like a gorgon influence. Her conflicting fears had not entirely changed her ethiopian skin, but they had subtracted her colour in stripes, till she looked like Robin Hood's willow wand.

"Why did you not stop her?" exclaimed Jane, hastily passing the girl.

"Stop her, missy? the land's sake! I could as easy stop a flash of lightning! missy must think me a 'rac'lous creature, respecting me to hold back such a harricane."

At Jane's approach Bet dropped the broom, and threw the empty bed-tick at poor Sukey, who shook it off, not, however, till her woolly pate was completely powdered with the lint. "Now, Sukey," screamed Bet with a wild peal of laughter, "look in the glass, and you'll see how white you'll be in heaven; the black stains will all be washed out there!"