HEPSEY.
Friendship had prospered in the lower regions, for Hepsey had a
motherly heart, and Christie soon won her confidence by bestowing
her own. Her story was like many another; yet, being the first
Christie had ever heard, and told with the unconscious eloquence of
one who had suffered and escaped, it made a deep impression on her,
bringing home to her a sense of obligation so forcibly that she
began at once to pay a little part of the great debt which the white
race owes the black.
Christie loved books; and the attic next her own was full of them.
To this store she found her way by a sort of instinct as sure as
that which leads a fly to a honey-pot, and, finding many novels, she
read her fill. This amusement lightened many heavy hours, peopled
the silent house with troops of friends, and, for a time, was the
joy of her life.
Hepsey used to watch her as she sat buried in her book when the
day's work was done, and once a heavy sigh roused Christie from the
most exciting crisis of "The Abbot."
"What's the matter? Are you very tired, Aunty?" she asked, using the
name that came most readily to her lips.
"No, honey; I was only wishin' I could read fast like you does.
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