“What is it, Father?”
“I know I’ve no right to worry you like 274 this, but I don’t stand reverses like I once did.”
“Reverses! You told me it wasn’t money! And, anyway, what does Uncle Josiah’s action have to do with your reverses?” She switched on the light at her desk. When she saw her father’s face she gave a little cry.
“I have told you the truth, Beth. It isn’t money. I wish to God it were nothing more than that! There are reverses far harder to bear than financial ones.”
Her father appeared older than she had ever seen him. Dejection showed through every line of his haggard face. The side-whiskers, which to his daughter’s mind he had worn with great distinction, now gave to his worn features a grotesque expression.
“I feel pretty well worn out to-night, my dear,”––weariness was in every word he uttered,––“and as if I need some one to lean on. If I did not need you to help me, I should not be bothering you at this hour of the night.”
The girl drew before her father’s chair the footstool which earlier in the evening she had 275 kicked into a far corner. She sat at his knee, and, taking his hand in hers, pressed it against her cheek. For some time they sat thus in silence. Her father broke in on the quietness of the room with a peculiar question.
“The Bible tells us that we should love our enemies, doesn’t it, Beth?”
“But, Father, you have no enemies worth worrying about! Why should you ask such a question?”
“They may not be worth worrying about, but as I said before I don’t seem able to fight off worry as I once could.”