“Maybe he is busy, my dear.”
“Oh! I do wish people would not be busy,” said the child pettishly, “it makes them so disagreeable. Thibs is always being busy, and then oh! she is so cross.”
“Why, Julie, you want people always to be laughing and playing with you.”
“No, no, mamma, I like to work sometimes—with Mr Bayle and learn, and so I do like the lessons I learn with you. You never look cross at me, and Mr Bayle never does.”
“But, my darling, the world could not go on if people were never serious. Why, the sun does not always shine: there are clouds over it sometimes.”
“But it’s always shining behind the clouds, Mr Bayle says.”
“And so is papa’s love for his darling shining behind the clouds—the serious looks that come upon his face,” cried Millicent. “There, you must remember that.”
“Yes,” said the child, nodding, and drawing two clusters of curls away from her mother’s face to look up at it laughingly and then kiss her again and again. “Oh! how pretty you are, mamma! I never saw any one with a face like yours.”
“Silence, little nonsense talker,” cried Millicent, with her face all happy smiles and the old look of her unmarried life coming back as she returned the child’s caresses.
“I never did,” continued Julia, tracing the outlines of the countenance that bent over her, with one rosy finger. “Grandma’s is very, very nice, and I like grandpa’s face, but it is very rough. Mamma!”