on't you know that Jesus loves all alike? He
is just as willing to love you, as me. He loves you just as I do,--only
more, because he is better. He will help you to be good; and you can go
to Heaven at last, and be an angel forever, just as much as if you
were white. Only think of it, Topsy!--_you_ can be one of those spirits
bright, Uncle Tom sings about."

"O, dear Miss Eva, dear Miss Eva!" said the child; "I will try, I will
try; I never did care nothin' about it before."

St. Clare, at this instant, dropped the curtain. "It puts me in mind of
mother," he said to Miss Ophelia. "It is true what she told me; if we
want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ
did,--call them to us, and _put our hands on them_."

"I've always had a prejudice against negroes," said Miss Ophelia, "and
it's a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but, I
don't think she knew it."

"Trust any child to find that out," said St. Clare; "there's no keeping
it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit
a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never
excite one emotion of gratitude, while that feeling of repugnance
remains in the heart;--it's a queer kind of a fact,--but so it is."

"I don't know how I can help it," said Miss Ophelia; "they _are_
disagreeable to me,--this child in particular,--how can I help feeling
so?"

"Eva does, it seems."

"Well, she's so loving! After all, though, she's no more than
Christ-like," said Miss Ophelia; "I wish I were like her. She might
teach me a lesson."

"It wouldn't be the first time a little child had been used to instruct
an old disciple, if it _were_ so," said St. Clare.

CHAPTER XXVI

Death

Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,
In life's early morning, hath hid from our eyes.*

* "Weep Not for Those," a poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852).

Eva's bed-room was a spacious apartment, which, like all the other
robins in the house, opened on to the broad verandah. The room
communicated, on one side, with her father and mother's apartment;
on the other, with that appropriated to Miss Ophelia. St. Clare had
gratified his own eye and taste, in furnishing this room in a style
that had a peculiar keeping with the character of her for whom it was
intended. The windows were hung with curtains of rose-colored and white
muslin, the floor was spread with a matting which had been ordered
in Pa