alleviations, so
that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable.

Tom read, in his only literary cabinet, of one who had "learned in
whatsoever state he was, therewith to be content." It seemed to him
good and reasonable doctrine, and accorded well with the settled and
thoughtful habit which he had acquired from the reading of that same
book.

His letter homeward, as we related in the last chapter, was in due time
answered by Master George, in a good, round, school-boy hand, that
Tom said might be read "most acrost the room." It contained various
refreshing items of home intelligence, with which our reader is fully
acquainted: stated how Aunt Chloe had been hired out to a confectioner
in Louisville, where her skill in the pastry line was gaining wonderful
sums of money, all of which, Tom was informed, was to be laid up to go
to make up the sum of his redemption money; Mose and Pete were thriving,
and the baby was trotting all about the house, under the care of Sally
and the family generally.

Tom's cabin was shut up for the present; but George expatiated
brilliantly on ornaments and additions to be made to it when Tom came
back.

The rest of this letter gave a list of George's school studies, each
one headed by a flourishing capital; and also told the names of four new
colts that appeared on the premises since Tom left; and stated, in the
same connection, that father and mother were well. The style of the
letter was decidedly concise and terse; but Tom thought it the most
wonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times. He
was never tired of looking at it, and even held a council with Eva on
the expediency of getting it framed, to hang up in his room. Nothing but
the difficulty of arranging it so that both sides of the page would show
at once stood in the way of this undertaking.

The friendship between Tom and Eva had grown with the child's growth. It
would be hard to say what place she held in the soft, impressible heart
of her faithful attendant. He loved her as something frail and earthly,
yet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine. He gazed on
her as the Italian sailor gazes on his image of the child Jesus,--with a
mixture of reverence and tenderness; and to humor her graceful fancies,
and meet those thousand simple wants which invest childhood like
a many-colored rainbow, was Tom's chief delight. In the market, at
morning, his eyes were always on the