"What would you do with them?"
"I'd sell them, and buy a place in the free states, and take all our people there, and hire teachers, to teach them to read and write."
Eva was cut short by her mother's laughing.
"Set up a boarding-school! Would n't you teach them to play on the piano, and paint on velvet?"
"I'd teach them to read their own Bible, and write their own letters, and read letters that are written to them," said Eva, steadily. "I know, mamma, it does come very hard on them, that they can't do these things. Tom feels it,—Mammy does,—a great many of them do. I think it's wrong."
"Come, come, Eva; you are only a child! You don't know anything about these things," said Marie; "besides, your talking makes my head ache."
Marie always had a head-ache on hand for any conversation that did not exactly suit her.
Eva stole away; but after that, she assiduously gave Mammy reading lessons.
