It would be hard to say what place she held in the soft, impressible heart of her faithful attendant.

He loved her as something frail and earthly, yet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine.

He gazed on her as the Italian sailor gazes on his image of the child Jesus,--with a mixture of reverence and tenderness; and to humor her graceful fancies, and meet those thousand simple wants which invest childhood like a many-colored rainbow, was Tom's chief delight.

In the market, at morning, his eyes were always on the flower-stalls for rare bouquets for her, and the choicest peach or orange was slipped into his pocket to give to her when he came back; and the sight that pleased him most was her sunny head looking out the gate for his distant approach, and her childish questions,--"Well, Uncle Tom, what have you got for me today ?" Nor was Eva less zealous in kind offices, in return.

Though a child, she was a beautiful reader;--a fine musical ear, a quick poetic fancy, and an instinctive sympathy with what's grand and noble, made her such a reader of the Bible as Tom had never before heard.