“_Un_, _deux_, _trois_, _quatre_, _cinq_.” Paqueta crooked her little fingers, and commenced; “_Un_, _deux_, _quatre_—_non, ce n’est pas juste_; _un_, _quatre_, _cinq_”—and then, with a fillip upon her ear, the one hundred and ninety-ninth, she sprang away, and shouted, and laughed, and crept back again, and rolled at my feet, and took them in her hands, and said that indeed she must learn, and thought that she should do so, if she could but try again. And thus we went on, from day to day, Paqueta’s little head refusing to hold more than three numerals at once, and even those three not in the right relative position. And when Paqueta became weary of her counting, and I became weary of the fillip, she would steal up behind my chair, and comb out my hair—which I then wore foolishly long, having enough of it—and fumble in my pockets for paper, and roll my locks up tightly to the skin, saying that they must curl, and that, as I was a good man, I must buy her, and she would be my nice little barber forever. Buy her! And so she knew that she was a thing of barter—a thing to be bought and sold! And what if she did know it—was she the less happy for her knowledge—and was she other than we all are, in this broad world? Who buys the maid, trained to all luxury, sighing for position! And who buys the youth, in science well instructed, ambitious of a name! The poor are bought daily, under every sum that civilization acknowledges, and the rich, when in want of other purchasers, sell themselves to their own vices. Small difference is it, whether the price be pounds, shillings, and pence, or a promise of ease, or power, or bread, or pleasures, forbidden in this life, to be accounted for in the next. So Paqueta was not so unfortunate, after all.