“She was tired, and went to bed early. Oh, papa! must I call her ‘mamma’?”
“I should like it,” replied he, with a slight contraction of the brows.
Molly was silent. She put a cup of tea near him; he stirred it, and sipped it, and then he recurred to the subject.
“Why shouldn’t you call her ‘mamma’? I’m sure she means to do the duty of a mother to you. We all may make mistakes, and her ways may not be quite all at once our ways; but at any rate let us start with a family bond between us.”
What would Roger say was right?—that was the question that rose to Molly’s mind. She had always spoken of her father’s new wife as Mrs. Gibson, and had once burst out at Miss Brownings’ with a protestation that she would never call her “mamma.” She did not feel drawn to her new relation by their intercourse that evening. She kept silence, though she knew her father was expecting an answer. At last he gave up his expectation and turned to another subject; told about their journey, questioned her as to the Hamleys, the Brownings, Lady Harriet, and the afternoon they had passed together at the Manor-house. But there was a certain hardness and constraint in his manner, and in hers a heaviness and absence of mind. All at once she said:
“Papa, I will call her ‘mamma’!”
He took her hand and grasped it tight; but for an instant or two he did not speak. Then he said:
“You won’t be sorry for it, Molly, when you come to lie as poor Craven Smith did to-night.”
Calf-Love
From Wives and Daughters.