But thinking made Chloe feel still more rebellious. Tom was fat and stupid, with thick lips, and small, dull-looking eyes. He compared very unfavorably with her bright and handsome Jim. She swayed back and forth, and groaned. She thought over all the particulars of that last walk on the beach, and murmured to herself, "He looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to say suthin'." She thought of Tom and groaned again; and underlying all her confusion of thoughts there was a miserable feeling that, if the minister and her mistress both said she must marry Tom, there was no help for it. The next day, she slashed and slammed round in an extraordinary manner. She broke a mug and a bowl, and sanded the floor with a general conglomeration of scratches, instead of the neat herring-bone on which she usually prided herself. It was the only way she had to exercise her free-will in its desperate struggle with necessity. Mrs. Lawton, who never thought of her in any other light than as a machine, did not know what to make of these singular proceedings. "What upon airth ails you?" exclaimed she. "I do believe the gal's gone crazy." Chloe paused in her harum-scarum sweeping, and said, with a look and tone almost defiant, "I don't _want_ to marry Tom." "But the minister wants you to marry him," replied Mrs. Lawton, "and you ought to mind the minister." Chloe did not dare to dispute that assertion, but she dashed her broom round in the sand, in a very rebellious manner. "Mind what you're about, gal!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton. "I am not going to put up with such tantrums." Chloe was acquainted with the weight of her mistress's hand, and she moved the broom round in more systematic fashion; but there was a tempest raging in her soul. In the course of a few days the minister visited the kitchen again, and found Chloe still averse to his proposition. If his spiritual ear had been delicate, he would have noticed anguish in her pleading tone, when she said: "Please, Massa Gordonmammon, don't say nothin' more 'bout it. I don't _want_ to be married." But his spiritual ear was _not_ delicate; and her voice sounded to him merely as that of a refractory wench, who was behaving in a manner very unseemly and ungrateful in a bondwoman who had been taken from the heathen round about, and brought under the guidance of Christians. He therefore assumed his sternest look when he said: "I supposed you knew it was your duty to obey whatever your minister and your mistress tell you. The Bible says, 'He is the minister of God unto you.' It also says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all things'; and your mistress stands to you in the place of your deceased master. How are you going to account to God for your disobedience to his commands?" Chloe, half frightened and half rebellious, replied, "I don't think Missis would like it, if you made Missy Katy marry somebody when she said she didn't want to be married."