A week later, Mr. and Mrs. Percival came, with tidings that no such persons as Signor and Madame Papanti were on board the Mermaid; and they proposed writing letters of inquiry forthwith to consuls in various parts of Italy and France.

Flora began to hop and skip and clap her hands.  But she soon paused, and said, laughingly:  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen.  Mamita often tells me I was brought up in a bird-cage; and I ask her how then can she expect me to do anything but hop and sing.  Excuse me.  I forgot Mamita and I were not alone.”

“You pay us the greatest possible compliment,” rejoined Mr. Percival.

And Mrs. Percival added, “I hope you will always forget it when we are here.”

“Do you really wish it?” asked Flora, earnestly.  “Then I will.”

And so, with a few genial friends, an ever-deepening attachment between her and her adopted mother, a hopeful feeling at her heart about Rosa, Tulee’s likeness by her bedside, and Madame’s parrot to wish her Bon jour!  Boston came to seem to her like a happy home.

CHAPTER XXIII.

About two months after their return from the South, Mr. Percival called one evening, and said:  “Do you know Mr. Brick, the police-officer?  I met him just now, and he stopped me.  ’There’s plenty of work for you Abolitionists now-a-days,’ said he.  ’There are five Southerners at the Tremont, inquiring for runaways, and cursing Garrison.  An agent arrived last night from Fitzgerald’s plantation,—­he that married Bell’s daughter, you know.  He sent for me to give me a description of a nigger that had gone off in a mysterious way to parts unknown.  He wanted me to try to find the fellow, and, of course, I did; for I always calculate to do my duty, as the law directs.  So I went immediately to Father Snowdon, and described the black man, and informed him that his master had sent for him, in a great hurry.  I told him I thought it very likely he was lurking somewhere in Belknap Street; and if he would have the goodness to hunt him up, I would call, in the course of an hour or two, to see what luck he had.’”

“Who is Father Snowdon?” inquired Mrs. Delano.

“He is the colored preacher in Belknap Street Church,” replied Mr. Percival, “and a remarkable man in his way.  He fully equals Chloe in prayer; and he is apt to command the ship Buzzard to the especial attention of the Lord.  The first time I entered his meeting, he was saying, in a loud voice, ’We pray thee, O Lord, to bless her Majesty’s good ship, the Buzzard; and if there’s a slave-trader now on the coast of Africa, we pray thee, O Lord, to blow her straight under the lee of the Buzzard.’  He has been a slave himself, and he has perhaps helped off more slaves than any man in the country.  I doubt whether Garrick himself had greater power to disguise his countenance.  If a slaveholder asks him about a slave, he is the most stolid-looking creature imaginable.  You wouldn’t suppose he understood anything, or ever could understand anything.  But if he meets an Abolitionist a minute after, his black face laughs all over, and his roguish eyes twinkle like diamonds, while he recounts how he ‘come it’ over the Southern gentleman.  That bright soul of his is a jewel set in ebony.”