“Look here, Julia,” he said sharply, “I will not have you behave like this. Does your mother teach you to keep away from me because I seem so cross?” he added with a laugh that was not pleasant.
“No,” said the child, shaking her head; “she said I was to be very fond of you, because you were my dear papa.”
“Well, and are you?”
“Yes,” said the child, nodding, “I think so;” and she looked wistfully in his face.
“That’s right; and now be a good girl, and you shall have a pony to ride, and everything you like to ask for.”
“And money to give to poor mamma?”
“Silence!” cried Hallam harshly, and the child shrank away, and covered her face with her hands. “Don’t do that! Take down your hands. What have you to cry for now?”
The child dropped her hands in a frightened manner, and looked at him with her large dark eyes, that seemed to be watching for a blow, her face twitching slightly, but there were no tears.
“Any one would think I was a regular brute to the child,” he muttered, scowling at her involuntarily, and then sitting very thoughtful and quiet, holding her on his knee, while he thrust back the breakfast things, and tapped the table. At last, turning to her with a smile, “Have a cup of coffee, Julie?” he said.
She shook her head. “I had my breakfast with mamma ever so long since.”