The following afternoon a little figure stole quietly down to the library door. Betty knew her father was out, and Mr. Roper never repulsed any of the children. After a timid knock she passed in, and made a little picture as she stood in the firelight, in her brown velveteen frock and large white-frilled pinafore.
'Well,' said Mr. Roper, wheeling round from his writing-desk, 'what do you want, Betty?'
'I want one of father's books,' the child said earnestly, 'one that Dick Somebody wrote—a book that tells the meaning of everything.'
'I wish there was such a one in existence,' said the young man, smiling a little sadly. 'Now what is in your little head, I wonder?'
'It's a word I want to find, please.'
'Oh, a word! Bless the child, she means a dictionary!' and Mr. Roper laughed as he drew a fat volume out of a shelf, and placed it on a table by the little girl.
'May I help you to find it?'
'It's tribulation. I don't know how it's spelt.'
He did not ask questions; that was one thing that attracted Betty towards him. She was a curious mixture of frankness and reserve. She would confide freely of her own free will, but if pressed by questions would relapse at once into silence. He found the word for her, and she read with difficulty, 'Trouble, distress, great affliction.'
'Do they all mean tribulation?' she asked.