“Most likely,” said Marie, yawning,—­“dear me, how hot it is!”

“Mamma, you believe, don’t you, that Topsy could become an angel, as well as any of us, if she were a Christian?”

“Topsy! what a ridiculous idea!  Nobody but you would ever think of it.  I suppose she could, though.”

“But, mamma, isn’t God her father, as much as ours?  Isn’t Jesus her Saviour?”

“Well, that may be.  I suppose God made everybody,” said Marie.  “Where is my smelling-bottle?”

“It’s such a pity,—­oh! such a pity!” said Eva, looking out on the distant lake, and speaking half to herself.

“What’s a pity?” said Marie.

“Why, that any one, who could be a bright angel, and live with angels, should go all down, down down, and nobody help them!—­oh dear!”

“Well, we can’t help it; it’s no use worrying, Eva!  I don’t know what’s to be done; we ought to be thankful for our own advantages.”

“I hardly can be,” said Eva, “I’m so sorry to think of poor folks that haven’t any.”

“That’s odd enough,” said Marie;—­“I’m sure my religion makes me thankful for my advantages.”

“Mamma,” said Eva, “I want to have some of my hair cut off,—­a good deal of it.”

“What for?” said Marie.

“Mamma, I want to give some away to my friends, while I am able to give it to them myself.  Won’t you ask aunty to come and cut it for me?”

Marie raised her voice, and called Miss Ophelia, from the other room.

The child half rose from her pillow as she came in, and, shaking down her long golden-brown curls, said, rather playfully, “Come aunty, shear the sheep!”

“What’s that?” said St. Clare, who just then entered with some fruit he had been out to get for her.

“Papa, I just want aunty to cut off some of my hair;—­there’s too much of it, and it makes my head hot.  Besides, I want to give some of it away.”

Miss Ophelia came, with her scissors.

“Take care,—­don’t spoil the looks of it!” said her father; “cut underneath, where it won’t show.  Eva’s curls are my pride.”

“O, papa!” said Eva, sadly.

“Yes, and I want them kept handsome against the time I take you up to your uncle’s plantation, to see Cousin Henrique,” said St. Clare, in a gay tone.

“I shall never go there, papa;—­I am going to a better country.  O, do believe me!  Don’t you see, papa, that I get weaker, every day?”

“Why do you insist that I shall believe such a cruel thing, Eva?” said her father.

“Only because it is true, papa:  and, if you will believe it now, perhaps you will get to feel about it as I do.”

St. Clare closed his lips, and stood gloomily eying the long, beautiful curls, which, as they were separated from the child’s head, were laid, one by one, in her lap.  She raised them up, looked earnestly at them, twined them around her thin fingers, and looked from time to time, anxiously at her father.