"Dear child!" was all he said in reply, accompanying the words with a tender caress.
"I, too, have come a good deal short of my resolves," observed Max, with a regretful sigh. "Yet I suppose we have both done better than we should if we hadn't made good resolutions."
"No doubt of it," said his father. "I feel it to be so in my case, though I, too, have fallen far short of the standard I set myself. But shall we not try again, my children?"
"Oh yes, sir, yes!"
"And try, not only to make the new year better—if we are spared to see it—but also the three remaining days of the old?"
"Yes," sighed Lulu, "perhaps I may get into a dreadful passion yet before the year is out."
"I hope not, daughter," her father said; "but watch and pray, for only so can you be safe. There is One who is able to keep you from falling. Cling close to Him like the limpet to the rock."
"Oh I will!" she replied in an earnest tone. "But papa what is a limpet?
I don't remember ever having heard of it before."
"It is a shell-fish of which there are numerous species exhibiting great variety of form and color. The common limpet is most abundant on the rocky coasts of Britain. They live on the rocks between low and high tide marks.
"They move about when the water covers them, but when the tide is out, remain firmly fixed to one spot; so firmly that unless surprised by a sudden seizure, it is almost impossible to drag or tear them from the rock without breaking the shell."