“Duty! So I'm to be taught my duty as well as the rest!” said he, passionately. “Don't you think there are some others might remember that they have duties also?”
“Would that I could fulfil mine as my heart dictates them!” said Ellen; and her lip trembled as she spoke the words.
“Faith! I scarce know what 's my duty, with all the drilling and dictating I get,” muttered he, sulkily. “But this I know, there 's no will left me I dare not budge this side or that without leave.”
“Dearest papa, be just to yourself, if not to me.”
“Isn't it truth I'm saying?” continued he, his anger rising with every word he spoke. “One day, I'm forbid to ask my friends home with me to dinner. Another, I 'm told I ought n't to go dine with them. I 'm tutored and lectured at every hand's turn. Never a thought crosses me, but it 's sure to be wrong. You din into my ears, how happy it is to be poor when one 's contented.”
“The lesson was yours, dear papa,” said Nelly, smiling. “Don't disavow your own teaching.”
“Well, the more fool me. I know better now. But what's the use of it? When the prospect of a little ease and comfort was offered to me, you persuaded me to refuse it. Ay, that you did! You began with the old story about our happy hearth and contentment; and where is it now?”
A sob, so low as to be scarcely heard, broke from Nelly, and she pressed her hand to her heart with a convulsive force.
“Can you deny it? You made me reject the only piece of kindness ever was shown me in a life long. There was the opportunity of spending the rest of my days in peace, and you wouldn't let me take it. And the fool I was to listen to you!”
“Oh, papa, how you wrong her!” cried Kate, as, in a torrent of tears, she bent over his chair. “Dearest Nelly has no thought but for us. Her whole heart is our own.”