"Nelly, we must love each other now more than ever."
Nelly's lips tremble, but she cannot answer; a tear or two go stealing down her cheek.
You approach them; and your father takes your hand again with a firm grasp,—looks at you thoughtfully,—drops his eyes upon the fire, and for a moment there is a pause;—"We are quite alone now, my boy!"
----It is a Broken Home!
VI.
Family Confidence.
Grief has a strange power in opening the hearts of those who sorrow in common. The father, who has seemed to you, not so much neglectful, as careless of your aims and purposes,—toward whom there have been in your younger years yearnings of affection which his chilliness of manner has seemed to repress, now grows under the sad light of the broken household into a friend. The heart feels a joy it cannot express, in its freedom to love and to cherish. There is a pleasure wholly new to you in telling him of your youthful projects, in listening to his questionings, in seeking his opinions, and in yielding to his judgment.
It is a sad thing for the child, and quite as sad for the parent, when this confidence is unknown. Many and many a time with a bursting heart you have longed to tell him of some boyish grief, or to ask his guidance out of some boyish trouble; but at the first sight of that calm, inflexible face, and at the first sound of his measured words, your enthusiastic yearnings toward his love and his counsels have all turned back upon your eager and sorrowing heart, and you have gone away to hide in secret the tears which the lack of his sympathy has wrung from your soul.
But now over the tomb of her, for whom you weep in common, there is a new light breaking; and your only fear is lest you weary him with what may seem a barren show of your confidence.