Meanwhile, Helen, quite unconscious that she had been a subject of discussion among the boarders, drew out the table into the middle of the room, and spread over it a neat white cloth. She then placed upon it two bowls of different sizes into which she poured the milk. Several slices were cut from one of the loaves and laid on a plate. Near by stood the butter. These simple preparations being concluded, she called upon her father to partake.
“You are a good girl, Helen,” said he, rousing for the moment from his fit of abstraction. “You are a good girl, and I don’t know how I should get along without you.”
“And I am sure I could not get along without you, papa,” was her reply, accompanied with a glance of affection.
“Have you not always cared for me, Helen, and given up the society of those of your own age in order to minister to my comfort? But it shall not always be so. Some day I shall be rich——”
“When you have completed your invention, papa.”
“Yes, when that is completed,” said her father, earnestly. “Then we shall be rich and honored, and my Helen shall be dressed in silks, and ride in a carriage of her own.”
“You are quite sure you shall succeed, papa?”
“I am sure of it,” he answered, in a tone of quiet conviction. “I only fear that some one will be beforehand with me, and snatch away the honor for which I am toiling. To me it seems passing strange that mankind should have been content for so many years to grope about upon the earth and never striven to rise into the nobler element of the air, while the sea, which presents difficulties as great, is traversed in every part. For me,” he continued, assuming a loftier mien, and pacing the small room proudly,—“for me it remains to open a new highway to the world. What compared with this will be the proudest triumphs of modern science? How like a snail shall we regard the locomotive, which now seems a miracle of swiftness! Borne aloft by the appliances which I shall furnish, man will emulate the proud flight of the eagle. He will skim over land and sea, and in his airy flight look down upon the monuments of human skill and industry flitting before him, like the shifting scenes of a panorama.”
“It will be a glorious destiny,” said the child, “and how proud I shall feel of you who have done all this!”
“While we are speaking, time passes,” said the father. “I should be at work even now. I must bring hither my implements without delay. Every moment wasted before I attain my object, is not my loss, only, but the world’s.”