Myra bent down and looked into his eyes, smiling.
“Don’t look so sorry,” she said; “I will call you papa, if you like. Papa! dear papa! there, now!”
But even the childish caress, accompanied as it was by a voice and look of the most winning sweetness, failed to dispel the sadness that had fallen upon the father’s heart. Perhaps the very loveliness of the child did but deepen that sadness, by reminding him of its mother. Let this be as it may, Mr. Clark sat down by the fountain with the little girl in his arms, but he remained silent, thus chilling the little creature whose arms were about his neck, and she too became hushed, as it were, by the gloom into which he fell. During several minutes the father and child remained thus wrapped in silence. At last he spoke in a low and troubled voice, kissing the forehead of the child:
“Myra, do you love me?”
“Indeed, indeed I do,” said the little girl, laying her cheek to his. “Better almost than anybody else in the wide world, if you are only my godfather.”
“And whom—” here Mr. Clark’s voice faltered—“and whom can you love better, Myra?”
“Oh,” said the child, shaking her head with a pretty mysterious air, “there is somebody that I love so much, a pretty, beautiful lady, who comes to me so often, and so strangely, just like one of the fairies nurse tells me about. Sometimes she will be a long, long time, and not come at all. Then, while I am playing among the trees, she will be close to me before I think of it. She kisses me just as you do, and once—that, too, was so like—” the child paused, and seemed pondering over something in her mind.
“What was so like, Myra?” said Mr. Clark, in a faint voice, for his heart misgave him.
“Why, I was just thinking,” said the child thoughtfully; “this pretty lady wanted me to call her mamma, just as you wanted me to call you papa, you know, only in fun.”
“And did you call her that?”