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222 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; OR
why, it's impossible ! Now, St. Clare really has talked to me as if keeping Mammy from her husband was like keeping me from mine. There 's no comparing in this way. Mammy could n't have the feelings that I should. It's a different thing altogether, — of course, it is, — and yet St. Clare pretends not to see it. And just as if Mammy could love her little dirty babies as I love Eva! Yet St. Clare once really and soberly tried to persuade me that it was my duty, with my weak health, and all I suffer, to let Mammy go back, and take somebody else in her place. That was a little too much even for me to bear. I don't often show my feelings. I make it a principle to endure everything in silence; it's a wife's hard lot, and I bear it. But I did break out, that time ; so that he has never alluded to the subject since. But I know by his looks, and little things that he says, that he thinks so as much as ever; and it's so trying, so provoking ! "
Miss Ophelia looked very much as if she was afraid she should say something ; but she rattled away with her needles in a way that had volumes of meaning in it, if Marie could only have understood it.
" So, you just see," she continued, " what you 've got to manage. A household without any rule ; where servants have it all their own way, do what they please, and have what they please, except so far as I, with my feeble health, have kept up government. I keep my cowhide about, and sometimes I do lay it on ; but the exertion is always too much for me. If St. Clare would only have this thing done as others do " —
" And how 's that ? "
" Why, send them to the calaboose, or some of the other places, to be flogged. That's the only way. If I was n't such a poor, feeble piece, I believe I should manage with twice the energy that St. Clare does."
" And how does St. Clare contrive to manage ? " said Miss Ophelia. " You say he never strikes a blow."
" Well, men have a more commanding way, you know; |
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