“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?”