“Come here, Tops, you monkey!” said St. Clare, calling the child up to him.

Topsy came up; her round, hard eyes glittering and blinking with a mixture of apprehensiveness and their usual odd drollery.

“What makes you behave so?” said St. Clare, who could not help being amused with the child’s expression.

“Spects it’s my wicked heart,” said Topsy, demurely; “Miss Feely says so.”

“Don’t you see how much Miss Ophelia has done for you?  She says she has done everything she can think of.”

“Lor, yes, Mas’r! old Missis used to say so, too.  She whipped me a heap harder, and used to pull my har, and knock my head agin the door; but it didn’t do me no good!  I spects, if they ‘s to pull every spire o’ har out o’ my head, it wouldn’t do no good, neither,—­I ’s so wicked!  Laws!  I ’s nothin but a nigger, no ways!”

“Well, I shall have to give her up,” said Miss Ophelia; “I can’t have that trouble any longer.”

“Well, I’d just like to ask one question,” said St. Clare.

“What is it?”

“Why, if your Gospel is not strong enough to save one heathen child, that you can have at home here, all to yourself, what’s the use of sending one or two poor missionaries off with it among thousands of just such?  I suppose this child is about a fair sample of what thousands of your heathen are.”

Miss Ophelia did not make an immediate answer; and Eva, who had stood a silent spectator of the scene thus far, made a silent sign to Topsy to follow her.  There was a little glass-room at the corner of the verandah, which St. Clare used as a sort of reading-room; and Eva and Topsy disappeared into this place.

“What’s Eva going about, now?” said St. Clare; “I mean to see.”

And, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the glass-door, and looked in.  In a moment, laying his finger on his lips, he made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look.  There sat the two children on the floor, with their side faces towards them.  Topsy, with her usual air of careless drollery and unconcern; but, opposite to her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her large eyes.

“What does make you so bad, Topsy?  Why won’t you try and be good?  Don’t you love anybody, Topsy?”

“Donno nothing ’bout love; I loves candy and sich, that’s all,” said Topsy.

“But you love your father and mother?”

“Never had none, ye know.  I telled ye that, Miss Eva.”

“O, I know,” said Eva, sadly; “but hadn’t you any brother, or sister, or aunt, or—­”

“No, none on ’em,—­never had nothing nor nobody.”

“But, Topsy, if you’d only try to be good, you might—­”

“Couldn’t never be nothin’ but a nigger, if I was ever so good,” said Topsy.  “If I could be skinned, and come white, I’d try then.”

“But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy.  Miss Ophelia would love you, if you were good.”