Mary Fuller not only believed that her father would come, but she felt sure he would be with her that very night. Thus she sat upon the stairs waiting.
But time wore on, and anxiety made the child restless. She began to doubt—to wonder how she could have expected her father without one word or promise to warrant the hope. That which had been faith an hour before, grew into a sharp anxiety. She folded her arms upon her knees, and burying her face upon them, began to cry.
At last she arose with her eyes full of tears, and walked sadly into the attic room where she sat down looking with sorrow on all the little preparations that she had made. She crept to the window, and clinging with both hands to the sill, lifted herself up to see, by the shadows that lay among the chimneys, and the slanting gold of the sunshine which, thank God, warms the tenement house and the palace towers alike, how fast the hours wore on.
"Oh, the sun is up yet, and the long chimney's shadow is only half way to the eves," she exclaimed, hopefully, dropping down from the window, while a flush, as of joyful tears, stole around her eyes.
"Is there anything else I can do?" and she looked eagerly around the room.
It had been neatly swept. A fire burned in the little coffee-pot stove that occupied one corner, and the hum of boiling water stole out from a tea-kettle that stood upon it.
"Everything nice and warm as toast—won't he like it—clean sheets upon the bed, and—and—oh, I forgot—it always lay back of his pillow—he mustn't miss it"; and opening a worn Bible that had seen better days, she found a passage that cheered her heart like a prophecy, and read it with solemn attention as she walked slowly across the room.
She placed the Bible reverently beneath the single pillow arranged so neatly on the bed, and turned away murmuring—
"At any rate, I will have everything ready."
She opened the drawer of a pine table and looked in. Everything was in order there, and the table itself; she employed another minute in giving its spotless surface an extra polish; then arranged a fragment of carpet before the bed, and sat down to wait again.