dress, about wearing her hair; and she seemed to have already
imbibed a small stock of social prejudices not altogether in harmony
with the republicanism of Viosca's Point. Occasional swarthy
visitors,--men of the Manilla settlements,--she spoke of contemptuously
as negues-marrons; and once she shocked Carmen inexpressibly by
stopping in the middle of her evening prayer, declaring that she wanted
to say her prayers to a white Virgin; Carmen's Senora de Guadalupe was
only a negra! Then, for the first time, Carmen spoke so crossly to the
child as to frighten her. But the pious woman's heart smote her the
next moment for that first harsh word;--and she caressed the motherless
one, consoled her, cheered her, and at last explained to her--I know
not how--something very wonderful about the little figurine, something
that made Chita's eyes big with awe. Thereafter she always regarded
the Virgin of Wax as an object mysterious and holy.

And, one by one, most of Chita's little eccentricities were gradually
eliminated from her developing life and thought. More rapidly than
ordinary children, because singularly intelligent, she learned to adapt
herself to all the changes of her new environment,--retaining only that
indescribable something which to an experienced eye tells of hereditary
refinement of habit and of mind:--a natural grace, a thorough-bred ease
and elegance of movement, a quickness and delicacy of perception.

She became strong again and active--active enough to play a great deal
on the beach, when the sun was not too fierce; and Carmen made a canvas
bonnet to shield her head and face. Never had she been allowed to play
so much in the sun before; and it seemed to do her good, though her
little bare feet and hands became brown as copper. At first, it must
be confessed, she worried her foster-mother a great deal by various
queer misfortunes and extraordinary freaks;--getting bitten by crabs,
falling into the bayou while in pursuit of "fiddlers," or losing
herself at the conclusion of desperate efforts to run races at night
with the moon, or to walk to the "end of the world." If she could only
once get to the edge of the sky, she said, she "could climb up." She
wanted to see the stars, which were the souls of good little children;
and she knew that God would let her climb up. "Just what I am afraid
of!"--thought Carmen to herself;--"He might let her climb up,--a little
ghost!" But one day naughty Chita received