"Do you mean that you are ever unhappy?"
"I am unhappy whenever you are, or I am afraid that you are. I know that you are very big and the cleverest man in the world, and that I am too little to do you any good, and I don't know why I worry when I am away." "But, my dear child, what in Heaven's name do you mean? Have you ever spoken to your mother of this?"
Angelica shook her head. Her eyes grew larger and wiser. "No; I should only worry Betsey, and she is always happy. She is not clever like you and me."
Hamilton rose abruptly and walked to the window. When he had composed his features he returned. "You must not criticise your mother in that way, my dear. She is a very clever little woman, indeed."
Angelica nodded. "If she were clever, you would not say 'little.' Nobody says that you are a very clever little man. When I'm big, I'll not be called little, either. I love our dear Queen Bess, but I'm all yours. Why were you so angry to-day?"
"I couldn't possibly tell you," replied her father, turning cold. "You must not ask too many questions; but I am very grateful for your sympathy. You are my dear little girl, and you make me love you more and more, daily."
"And will you tell me whenever you are not feeling like what you are making the rest believe?"
"If it will make you any happier, I will whisper it into your pink little ear. But I think I should be a very bad father to make you unhappy."
"I told you, sir, that I am more unhappy when I imagine things. It is just like a knife," and again she pointed to her head.
Hamilton turned pale. "You are too young to have headaches," he said. "Perhaps you have been studying too hard. I am so ambitious for my children; but the boys have taken to books as they have to kites and fisticuffs. I should have remembered that girls—" His memory gave up the stories of his mother's precocity. But this child, who was so startlingly like the dead woman, was far less fitted to carry such burdens. So sensitive an intelligence in so frail a body might suddenly flame too high and fall to ashes. He resolved to place her in classes of other little girls at once, and to keep her in the fields as much as possible. None knew better than he how close the highly strung unresting brain could press to madness. He had acquired a superhuman control over his. If this girl's brain had come out of his own, it must be closely watched. She had not inherited his high light spirits, but the melancholy which had lain at the foundations of his mother's nature; she would require the most persistent guarding. He took her face between his hands and kissed it many times.