ou were put to my
mother's breast. So mother tells me."

"Well, if you had been a white child, that would have made us
foster-sisters, wouldn't it? That's the reason old Mag loves me so well.
I never knew of this before."

"It's something very common here, you know, Miss, for white children to
have their foster-mothers among the slaves. Fashionable ladies always
think it ruins their forms to have a child at the breast."

"Yes, I know, Minn; and I think it a very shameful practice, too. I
never want to be a fashionable woman, if it is going to deprive me of
performing a mother's holiest offices for my children. I'm sure after a
child of mine had been reared at a black mother's breast I should feel
they were black children, had black blood in their veins, and I never
could feel right toward them again."

"You are one in a thousand, dear Miss Della; and such feelings are
right, and good, and noble. But if you ever wish to be truly a mother to
your children, don't marry a fashionable man, whose pride will be to
show you off all the time in gay company, and who will be always
fretting to keep your beauty good. It is such husbands that make bad
mothers. A woman can't be a votary of fashion and a good mother."

"I never shall marry a fashionable man, Minny--you _know_ that; but when
I _do_ marry I shall try and be a good, and true, and dutiful wife,
nothing more. I haven't a taste for high life--that is, gay life, which
has no heart in it. But, Minny, let's go back to you; I commenced about
you; what made you change the subject, child?"

"Did I, Miss?"

"Yes. Who was your father, Minny?"

Minny's cheek lost it's flush, and became pale as death.

"I cannot tell you, Miss."

"But you _know_."

Minny made no answer, but her hands shook violently, and the braids she
had just fastened fell loose again from her trembling fingers.

"What ails you, Minn? why don't you answer me?" said Della, looking up
earnestly at Minny, in the glass.

"I never told you a lie in the world, Miss Della; and I don't answer you
because I can't tell the truth now."

"You _must_ tell me if you know, Minny; and you must tell the truth,
too."

"Oh, Miss Della," said the girl, sinking at her mistress's feet in a fit
of wild weeping, "don't, don't ask me this. I never knew it myself till
yesterday, and then I wrung it from my mother, who charged me, if I
valued her life, never to lisp it again. It made me wretched. Oh, Miss
Della, it would