“Negro!  Pa, he is just as white as you are, and his eyes are as blue as mine.”

“Still he belongs to the Negro race; and one drop of that blood in his veins curses all the rest.  I would grant you anything in reason, but this is not to be thought of.  Were I to do so I would immediately lose caste among all the planters in the neighborhood; I would be set down as an Abolitionist, and singled out for insult and injury.  Ask me anything, Camilla, but that.”

“Oh, Pa, what do you care about social position?  You never hunt, nor entertain company, nor take any part in politics.  You shut yourself up in your library, year after year, and pore over your musty books, and hardly any one knows whether you are dead or alive.  And I am sure that we could hide the secret of his birth, and pass him off as the orphan child of one of our friends, and that will be the truth; for Agnes was our friend; at least I know she was mine.”

“Well, I’ll see about it; now, get down, and let me finish reading this chapter.”

The next day Camilla went again to the cabin of Miriam; but the overseer had set her to a task in the field, and Agnes’ baby was left to the care of an aged woman who was too old to work in the fields, but not being entirely past service, she was appointed as one of the nurses for the babies and young children, while their mothers were working in the fields.

Camilla, feeling an unusual interest in the child, went to the overseer, and demanded that Miriam should be released from her tasks, and permitted to attend the child.

In vain the overseer plead the pressure for hands, and the busy season.  Camilla said it did not matter, she wanted Miriam, and she would have her; and he, feeling that it was to his interest to please the little lady, had Miriam sent from the field to Camilla.

“Mammy, I want you to come to the house.  I want you to come and be my Mammy.  Agnes is dead; your husband is gone, and I want you to come and bring the baby to the house, and I am going to get him some beautiful dresses, and some lovely coral I saw in New Orleans, and I am going to dress him so handsomely, that I believe Pa will feel just as I do, and think it a shame that such a beautiful child should be a slave.”

Camilla went home, and told her father what she had done.  And he, willing to compromise with her, readily consented; and in a day or two the child and his grandmother were comfortably ensconced in their new quarters.

The winter passed; the weeks ripened into months, and the months into years, and the child under the pleasant dispensations of love and kindness grew to be a fine, healthy, and handsome boy.

One day, when Mr. Le Croix was in one of his most genial moods, Camilla again introduced the subject which she had concealed, but not abandoned.

“Now, father, I do think it is a shame for this child to be a slave, when he is just as white as anybody; I am sure we could move away from here to France, and you could adopt him as your son, and no one would know anything of his birth and parentage.  He is so beautiful, I would like him for my brother; and he looks like us anyhow.”