Without noticing them, the child cried out in a loud, clear voice, "Where is father? I want father to hold me! I want my father!" Then the terror swept over her again like some invisible enemy, and her cries became broken and inarticulate.
"Is she often like this?" asked Caroline of the old woman. "I can't hold her. I am afraid she will have a convulsion." With her arms about Letty, who moaned and shivered in her grasp, she added, "Letty, darling, shall I send for your mother?"
"Dar ain' but one thing dat'll quiet dis chile," said the old negress, "en dat is Marse David. I'se gwine atter Marse David."
She hobbled out in her lint slippers, while the girl held Letty closer, and murmured a hundred soothing words in her ear. "You may have father and mother too," she said, "you may have everyone, dear, if only you won't be frightened."
"I don't want everyone. I want father," cried the child, with a storm of sobs. "I want father because I am afraid. I want him to keep me from being afraid." Then, as the door opened, and Blackburn came into the room, she held out her arms, and said in a whisper, like the moan of a small hurt animal, "I thought you had gone away, father, and I was afraid of the dark."
Without speaking, Blackburn crossed the room, and dropping into a chair by the bed, laid his arm across the child's shoulders. At his touch her cries changed into shivering sobs which grew gradually fainter, and slipping back on the pillows, she looked with intent, searching eyes in his face. "You haven't gone away, father?"
"No, I haven't gone anywhere. You were dreaming."
Clasping his hand, she laid her cheek on it, and nestled under the cover. "I am afraid to go to sleep because I dream such ugly dreams."
"Dreams can't hurt you, Letty. No matter how ugly they are, they are only dreams."
His voice was low and firm, and at the first sound of it the pain and fear faded from Letty's face. "Were you asleep, father?"