"We will go to Missouri. You are out of your place, here,
among these groping dumb creatures. We will find a higher place, where
you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when you speak--not
stared at as if you were talking some foreign tongue. I would go
anywhere, anywhere in the wide world with you I would rather my body
would starve and die than your mind should hunger and wither away in this
lonely land."
"Spoken like yourself, my child! But we'll not starve, Nancy. Far from
it. I have a letter from Beriah Sellers--just came this day. A letter
that--I'll read you a line from it!"
He flew out of the room. A shadow blurred the sunlight in Nancy's face
--there was uneasiness in it, and disappointment. A procession of
disturbing thoughts began to troop through her mind. Saying nothing
aloud, she sat with her hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them,
then unclasped them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together;
sighed, nodded, smiled--occasionally paused, shook her head. This
pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken soliloquy which
had something of this shape:
"I was afraid of it--was afraid of it.
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