“Lift me up,” cried the little boy, who was trying in vain to scramble up one of the posts of the piazza, in order to reach a humming-bird’s nest, which hung in the tendrils of a creeper overhead, and which a light puff of wind now set swinging, so as to attract the child’s eye. What child ever saw a humming-bird thus rocking—its bill sticking out like a long needle on one side, and its tail at the other, without longing to clutch it? So Denis cried out imperiously to be lifted up. His father set him on the shelf within the piazza, where the calabashes were kept—a station whence he could see into the nest, and watch the bird, without being able to touch it. This was not altogether satisfactory. The little fellow looked about him for a calabash to throw at the nest; but his mother had carried in all her cups for the service of the supper-table. As no more wind came at his call, he could only blow with all his might, to swing the tendril again; and he was amusing himself thus when his father laid down his book, and stepped out to see once more whether Jean was approaching.
“Lift me down,” said the boy to his sister, when his head was giddy with blowing. Génifrède would fain have let him stay where he was, out of the way of mischief; but she saw that he was really afraid of falling, and she offered her shoulders for him to descend upon. When down, she would not let him touch her work; she took her scissors from his busy hands, and shook him off when he tried to pull the snowberries out of her hair; so that there was nothing left for the child to play with but his father’s book. He was turning it over, when Toussaint re-appeared.
“Ha! boy, a book in your hands already? I hope you may have as much comfort out of that book as I have had, Denis.”
“What is it? what is it about?” said the boy, who had heard many a story out of books from his father.
“What is it? Let us see. I think you know letters enough to spell it out for yourself. Come and try.”
The child knew the letter E, and, with a good deal of help, made out, at last, Epictetus.
“What is that?” asked the boy.
“Epictetus was a negro,” said Génifrède, complacently.
“Not a negro,” said her father, smiling. “He was a slave; but he was a white.”
“Is that the reason you read that book so much more than any other?”