"Well, miss, I dare say he's cross some mornings, and keeps the blankets about him after he's got his head up."
Lucy could not help thinking of Milton's line—for of the few poems she knew, one was the "Ode on the Nativity"—
So, when the Sun in bed,
Curtain'd with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave.
But the child laughed so queerly, that it was impossible to tell whether or how much those were her real ideas about the sunrise.
"How is your father?" Lucy asked.
"Do you mean my father or my mother?"
"I mean your father, of course, when I say so."
"Yes, but I have a mother, too."
Lucy let her have her way, for she did not quite understand her. Only she knew that the child's mother had died two or three years ago.
"Well," resumed the child, "my father is quite well, thank God; and so is my mother. There he is, looking down at us."