“The best way will be to tell you.  Juanita, they are—­I mean, we are—­playing pictures at home.”

“What is that, Miss Daisy?”

“Why, they take pictures—­pictures in books, you know—­and dress up people like the people in the pictures, and make them stand so or sit so, and look so, as the people in the pictures do; and so they make a picture of living people.”

“Yes, Miss Daisy.”

“They are playing pictures at home.  I mean, we are.  Mamma is going to give a great party next week; and the pictures are to be all made and shewn at the party.  There are twelve pictures; and they will be part of the entertainment.  There is to be a gauze stretched over the door of the library, and the pictures are to be seen behind the gauze.”

“And does Miss Daisy like the play?” the black woman inquired, not lightly.

“Yes, Juanita—­I like some things about it.  It is very amusing.  There are some things I do not like.”

“Did Miss Daisy wish to talk to me about those things she not like?”

“I don’t, know, Juanita—­no, I think not.  Not about those things.  But I do not exactly know about myself.”

“What Miss Daisy not know about herself?”

“I do not know exactly—­whether it is right.”

“Whether what be right, my love?”

Daisy was silent at first, and looked puzzled.

“Juanita—­I mean—­I don’t know whether I am right.”

“Will my love tell what she mean?”

“It is hard, Juanita.  But—­I don’t think I am quite right.  I want you to tell me what to do.”

Daisy’s little face looked perplexed and wise.  And sorry.

“What troubles my love?”

“I do not know how it was, Juanita—­I did not care at all about it at first; and then I began to care about it a little—­and now—­”

“What does my love care about?”

“About being dressed, Juanita; and wearing mamma’s jewels, and looking like a picture.”

“Will Miss Daisy tell Juanita better what she mean?”

“Why, you know, Juanita,” said the child wistfully, “they dress up the people to look like the pictures; and they have put me in some very pretty pictures; and in one I am to be beautifully dressed to look like Queen Esther—­with mamma’s jewels all over me.  And there is another little girl who would like to have that part,—­and I do not want to give it to her.”

Juanita sat silent, looking grave and anxious.  Her lips moved, but she said nothing that could be heard.

“And Juanita,” the child went on—­“I think, somehow, I like to look better than other people,—­and to have handsomer dresses than other people,—­in the pictures, you know.”

Still Juanita was silent.

“Is it right, Juanita?”

“Miss Daisy pardon me.  Who Miss Daisy think be so pleased to see her in the beautiful dress in the picture?”

“Juanita—­it was not that I meant.  I was not thinking so much of that.  Mamma would like it, I suppose, and papa;—­but I like it myself.”