Alice was a fair, delicate, gentle child.  Twelve summers and winters had passed over her little head without a cloud to obscure the sunshine of her life save one; but that one was a terribly dark one, and its shadow lingered over her for many years.  When Alice lost her mother, she lost the joy and delight of her existence, and although six years had passed since that awful day, and a fond Christian father had done his best to impress on her young mind that the beloved one was not lost forever, but would one day be found sitting at the feet of Jesus in a bright and beautiful world, the poor child could not recover her former elasticity of spirits.  Doubtless her isolated position, and the want of suitable companions, had something to do with the prolonged sadness of her little heart.

It is almost unnecessary to say that her love for her father was boundless.  This was natural, but it did not seem by any means so natural that the delicate child should give the next place in her heart to a wild little boy, a black girl, and a ragged little dog!  Yet so it was, and it would have been difficult for the closest observer to tell which of these three Alice liked best.

No one could so frequently draw forth the merry laugh that in former days had rung so sweetly over the hillsides of the verdant isle as our young friend Will Corrie.  Nothing could delight the heart of the child so much as to witness the mad gambols, not to mention the mischievous deeds, of that ragged little piece of an old door-mat, which, in virtue of its being possessed of animal life, was named Toozle.  And when Alice wished to talk quietly,—­to pour out her heart, and sometimes her tears,—­the bosom she sought on which to lay her head, next to her father’s, was that of her useful nursery-maid, a good, kind, and gentle, but an awfully stupid native girl, named Kekupoopi.

This name was, of course, reduced in its fair proportions by little Alice, who, however, retained the latter part thereof in preference to the former, and styled her maid Poopy.  Young Master Corrie, on the other hand, called her Kickup or Puppy, indifferently, according to the humor he chanced to be in when he met her, or to the word that rose most readily to his lips.

Mr. Mason replied to the question put by Alice, at the beginning of this somewhat lengthy digression, “No, my lamb, friends would not willingly do us harm; but there are those who call themselves friends who do not deserve the name, who pretend to be such, but who are in reality secret enemies.  But go, dearest, to your room; I am busy just now talking with Henry:  he, at least, is a trusty friend.  When I have done, you shall come back to me.”

Alice kissed her father, and, getting off his knee, went at once in search of her friend Poopy.

That dark-skinned and curly black-headed domestic was in the kitchen, seated on the bottom of an overturned iron pot, inside the dingy niche in which the domestic fire was wont to burn when anything of a culinary nature was going on.  At the time when her mistress entered, nothing of the kind was in progress, and the fire had subsided to extinction.