“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.

“It’s just what I’ve been foreboding!” said Marie; “it’s just what has been preying on my health, from day to day, bringing me downward to the grave, though nobody regards it. I have seen this, long. St. Clare, you will see, after a while, that I was right.”

“Which will afford you great consolation, no doubt!” said St. Clare, in a dry, bitter tone.

Marie lay back on a lounge, and covered her face with her cambric handkerchief.

Eva’s clear blue eye looked earnestly from one to the other. It was the calm, comprehending gaze of a soul half loosed from its earthly bonds; it was evident she saw, felt, and appreciated, the difference between the two.