“What can be in Mammy’s basket, I wonder?” said Grace.  “And, look, Sylvia!  Flora isn’t wearing the blue cockade!  That’s because she is coming to visit you.  She had it on at school this morning.”

Flora wore the same pretty velvet turban which she had worn on Sylvia’s last day at school.  She had on a cape of garnet-colored velvet, and as she came running into the room Sylvia looked at her with admiring eyes.

“You do look so pretty, Flora!  And I am so glad to see you.  Come up-stairs to my room and take off your things.”

“It isn’t half the fun going to school now that you don’t come, Sylvia,” responded Flora, as the three friends went up the broad staircase together.  “Mammy,” with her baskets, followed them, and when she had helped her little mistress lay aside her cape and hat, Flora said: 

“You can go home now, Mammy, And my mother will tell you when to come after me.”

“Yas, Missy,” responded the old colored woman, and with a curtsey to each of the little girls she left the room.

“What makes your mammy look so sober, Flora?” questioned Grace.  “She is usually all smiles; but to-day she hasn’t a word to say for herself.”

“Oh, the darkies are all stirred up over all this talk about their being set free,” Flora answered, “and even Mammy, who was Mother’s nurse, and has always been well taken care of, thinks it would be a fine thing for her children and grandchildren to be ‘jes’ like white folks,’” and Flora laughed scornfully.

“But that needn’t make her look sober!” insisted Grace.

“I reckon she’s upset because my mother sold two or three little slaves yesterday—­Mammy’s grandchildren,” Flora answered carelessly.

Sylvia could feel her face flushing, and she said over to herself that no matter what Flora said that she, Sylvia, must remember that Flora was her guest.  Beside that, had not Flora taken off the blue cockade so that Sylvia would not be reminded of the trouble at school?

But Grace felt no such restraints.  She was a southern girl as well as Flora, but she was sorry for the old colored woman.

“Well, I do wish we could keep the pickaninnies until they grow up.  It seems a shame when they feel so bad to be sold off to strangers.  And some of them are abused too,” she said.

“You talk as if they felt just the same as we do, and that’s silly,” Flora declared; “but Philip talks just the same.  He says he is going to give Dinkie her freedom,” and she turned toward the two baskets which Mammy had set down with such care near Molly and Polly.

“I brought my lace-work, and Mother has fixed a cushion for you, Sylvia, and one for Grace, too.  See!  The pattern is begun on each one, and I will give you both lessons until you know as much as I do.”  As Flora talked she had opened the smaller basket and taken out two square boxes and handed one to each of her friends.

“Open them,” she said, nodding smilingly.