"Are they kind to you?"

"They beat me--they're always beating me, or Dick, or Charlie,--
Charlie is the old horse that draws the van,--and I'd sooner be
beaten myself than see them being knocked about. We don't ever get
enough to eat, but that isn't so bad as the beatings."

"Poor child! You both look as if you had never had enough to eat in
your lives. Did they make baskets too?"

"No, ma'am, they can't. They make clothes-pegs, and they sell
brushes and mats, but my baskets brought them in as much as a pound a
week sometimes, and oh!" and she gasped at the thought, "Uncle Tom
will be angry, when he finds I don't come back!" and her eyes were
full of terror as she thought of his passion.

Mrs. Perry disappeared into the little scullery behind the kitchen,
and opened the door of the safe where she kept her scanty store of
food. There was very little in it but a ham-bone, a few eggs, a loaf
of bread, and a tiny bit of butter. The bone she had, earlier in the
day, decided would make her some pea-soup for to-morrow's dinner, but
she thought of poor Dick and his hollow sides, and came to the
conclusion that her soup would taste just as good without the bone;
and Dick, when he really grasped the fact that the whole of the big
bone was really meant for him, soon showed her that no ham-bone in
the world had ever given more complete satisfaction.

"Could you eat an egg?"