pointed out the beauties of the pattern, her hand and voice trembled.

Rosabella noticed it, and, looking up, said, "What troubles you, dear
friend?"

"O, this is a world of trouble," replied Madame, "and you have had
such a storm beating on your young heads, that I wonder you keep your
senses."

"I don't know as we could," said Rosa, "if the good God had not given
us such a friend as you."

"If any _new_ trouble should come, I trust you will try to keep up
brave hearts, my children," rejoined Madame.

"I don't know of any new trouble that _can_ come to us now," said
Rosa, "unless you should be taken from us, as our father was. It seems
as if everything else had happened that _could_ happen."

"O, there are worse things than having _me_ die," replied Madame.

Floracita had paused with her thread half drawn through her work, and
was looking earnestly at the troubled countenance of their friend.
"Madame," exclaimed she, "something has happened. What is it?"

"I will tell you," said Madame, "if you will promise not to scream
or faint, and will try to keep your wits collected, so as to help me
think what is best to be done."

They promised; and, watching her countenance with an expression of
wonder and anxiety, they waited to hear what she had to communicate.
"My dear children," said she, "I have heard something that will
distress you very much. Something neither you nor I ever suspected.
Your mother was a slave."

"_Our_ mother a slave!" exclaimed Rosa, coloring vehemently. "_Whose_
slave could she be, when she was Papasito's wife, and he loved her so?
It is impossible, Madame."

"Your father bought her when she was very young, my dear; but I know
very well that no wife was ever loved better than she was."

"But she always lived with her own father till she married papa," said
Floracita. "How then _could_ she be his slave?"

"Her father got into trouble about money, my dear; and he sold her."

"Our Grandpapa Gonsalez sold his daughter!" exclaimed Rosa. "How
incredible! Dear friend, I wonder you can believe such things."

"The world is full of strange things, my child,--stranger than
anything you ever read in story-books."

"If she was only Papasito's slave," said Flora, "I don't think Mamita
found _that_ any great hardship."

"She did not, my dear. I don't suppose she ever thought of it; but a
great misfortune has grown out of it."

"What is it?" they both asked at once.

Their friend hesitated. "Re