her with him, and have her boarded there,
and educated. Nobody need know anything about her being colored. I'd
send you both, Ellen, but, to tell you the truth, the plantation is
running down, and the crops are so short this year I can't afford it;
but when times get better, I'll send you up there and tell you where you
can find her."

"Well, Mr. St. Pierre, that is better than having Missus knocking her
around or selling her to one of those old mean nigger traders, and never
having a chance to see my darling no more. But, Mr. St. Pierre, before
you take her away won't you please give me her likeness? Maybe I won't
know her when I see her again."

Le Grange consented, and when he went to the city again he told his wife
he was going to sell the child.

"I am glad of it," said Georgiette. "I would have her mother sold, but
we can't spare her; she is so handy with her needle, and does all the
cutting out on the place."

Le Grange's Plan

"The whole fact is this Joe, I am in an awkward fix. I have got myself
into a scrape, and I want you to help me out of it. You were good at
such things when we were at College, and I want you to try your hand
again."

"Well, what's the difficulty now?"

"Well, it is rather a serious one. I have got a child on my hands, and I
don't know what to do with it."

"Whose child is it?"

"Now, that's just where the difficulty lies. It is the child of one of
my girls, but it looks so much like me, that my wife don't want it on
the place. I am too hard up just now to take the child and her mother,
North, and take care of them there. And to tell you the truth I am too
humane to have the child sold here as a slave. Now in a word do you
think that among your Abolitionist friends in the North you could find
any one who would raise the child and bring it up like a white child."

"I don't know about that St. Pierre. There are a number of our people in
the North, who do two things. They hate slavery and hate negroes. They
feel like the woman who in writing to her husband said, they say (or
don't say) that absence conquers love; for the longer you stay away the
better I love you. But then I know some who, I believe, are really
sincere, and who would do anything to help the colored people. I think I
know two or three families who would be willing to take the child, and
do a good part by her. If you say so, I will write to a friend whom I
have now in mind, and if they will consent I will t