Page:Aunt Phillis's Cabin.djvu/63

 hashed cod-fish on which she had tried to breakfast, she had a bill to pay, and where was the money? Poor Susan! she had only a quarter of a dollar, and that she had asked her mistress for a week before, to buy a pair of side-combs.

"Why, what a fool you be," said one of the men; "Didn't I tell you to bring your mistress' purse along?"

"And did you think I was going to steal besides running off from her and the poor baby?" answered Susan.

"It's not stealing," said the Abolitionist. "Haven't you been a slaving of yourself all your life for her, and I guess you've a right to be paid for it. I guess you think the rags on your back good wages enough?"

Susan looked at her neat dress, and thought they were very nice rags, compared to the clothes her landlady had on; but the Abolitionist was in a hurry.

"Come," said he, "I'm not going to spend all my time on you; if you want to be free, come along; pay what you owe and start."

"But I have only this quarter," said Susan, despairingly.

"I don't calculate to give runaway niggers their supper, and night's lodging and breakfast for twenty-five cents," said the woman. "I aint so green as that, I can tell you. If you've got no money, open your bundle, and we can make a trade, like as not."

Susan opened her bundle, (which was a good strong carpet-bag her mistress had given her,) and after some hesitation, the woman selected as her due a nice imitation of Cashmere shawl, the last present her mistress had given her. It had cost four dollars. Susan could hardly give it up; she wanted to keep it as a remembrance, but she already felt herself in the hands of the Philistines, and she fastened up her carpet-bag and set forward. She was carried off in the cars to an interior town, and directed to the house of an Abolitionist, to whom she was to hire herself.

Her fare was paid by this person, and then deducted from her wages—her wages were four dollars a month.