d, with black hair, dark
complexion, and a pair of uncommonly large black eyes, which looked
almost threateningly on the white and bright-haired little ones which
surrounded her.

"There, you have another sister," said the father, leading the children
towards each other;--"Sara, these are your sisters--love one another,
and be kind to one another, my children."

The children looked at each other, somewhat surprised; but as Henrik and
Louise took the little stranger by the hand, they soon all emulated each
other in bidding her welcome.

Supper was served up for the children, more lights were brought in, and
the scene was lively. Everything was sacrificed to the new comer. Louise
brought out for her two pieces of confectionery above a year old, and a
box in which they might be preserved yet longer.

Henrik presented her with a red trumpet, conferring gratuitous
instruction on the art of blowing it.

Eva gave her her doll Josephine in its new gauze dress.

Leonore lighted her green and red wax tapers before the dark-eyed Sara.

Petrea--ah, Petrea!--would so willingly give something with her whole
heart. She rummaged through all the places where she kept anything, but
they concealed only the fragments of unlucky things; here a doll without
arms; here a table with only three legs; here two halves of a sugar-pig;
here a dog without head and tail. All Petrea's playthings, in
consequence of experiments which she was in the habit of making on them,
were fallen into the condition of that which had been--and even that
gingerbread-heart with which she had been accustomed to decoy Gabriele,
had, precisely on this very day, in an unlucky moment of curiosity, gone
down Petrea's throat. Petrea really possessed nothing which was fit to
make a gift of. She acknowledged this with a sigh; her heart was tilled
with sadness, and tears were just beginning to run down her cheeks, when
she was consoled by a sudden idea--The Girl and the Rose-bush! That
jewel she still possessed; it hung still, undestroyed, framed and behind
glass, over her bed, and fastened by a bow of blue ribbon. Petrea
hesitated only a moment; in the next she had clambered up to her little
bed, taken down the picture, and hastened now with beaming eyes and
glowing cheeks to the others, in order to give away the very loveliest
thing she had, and to declare solemnly that now "Sara was the possessor
of the Girl and the Rose-bush."

The little African appeared very indi