what to do, I can't say; but just
then Sam Walker, a good-natured colored man, came up and put out the
flames before Prudy fairly knew there were any. Then he brought water
from a spring and drowned the bonfire, and gave the boys "a piece of
his mind."

All the while poor Prudy was running off into the thickest part of the
wood, crying bitterly. Sam ran after her, and caught her up, as if she
had been a stray lamb; and though she struggled hard, he carried her
to the picnic ground, where the large girls were just spreading the
table for supper.

"You'd better look out for these here young ones," said Sam. "This one
would have been roasted sure, if I hadn't a-happened along in the nick
of time."

Ruth Gray dropped the paper of candy she was untying, and turned very
pale. She had been too busy playing games to remember that she had the
care of any body.

"O, you little ducky darling," cried she, seizing Prudy in her arms,
"don't you cry, and you shall have a pocket full of candy. You didn't
get burnt a mite, did you, honey?"

"No'm, I ain't cryin'," sobbed Prudy. "I ain't crying any thing about
that;" and every word seemed to be shaken out, as if there was a
little earthquake at her heart--"_there--is--black folks!_ O, he is
just as--_black_!"

"Is that all," said Grace, stroking Prudy's hair. "Didn't she ever see
any negroes--any nice black negro men before, Susy?"

"I thought she had; why, we have 'em in the streets at Portland, lots
and lots of 'em."

After much soothing, and a good deal of candy, Prudy was comforted,
and the supper went off famously. The children were all polite and
well-behaved, "even the boys," as Ruth said; and though they all had
keen appetites, nobody was greedy.

By and by, when it would not do to stay any longer, they all started
for home, happy and tired.

Ruth held Prudy's little hand in a firm grasp, and wished she had held
it so all the afternoon; "for," as she said, to herself, "she's a very
_slippery_ child."

This had been a trying day for Prudy, and when aunt Madge put her to
bed, her sweet blue eyes wouldn't stay shut.

"Where do they grow, auntie?" said she, "them black folks. Be _they_
the jispies?"

"O, they grow any where," replied aunt Madge, laughing; "just like any
body. They are not gypsies, but negroes."

"I should think they'd wash their faces."

"O, they do, but our Heavenly Father made them black."

"Did he?" cried Prudy, raising her head from the pi