“Oh, no, I’m sure I shall not! Papa, what a good thing for me that you have trained me to obedience, for otherwise I should have gone with them and maybe have been killed, killed in that horrible way! You didn’t say I must stay in the house—only that you wanted me to—but I suppose it would have been disobedience if I’d gone, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes; a truly obedient child will not go against the known wishes of a parent. I trusted my daughter loved me enough to obey my slightest wish, so did not think it necessary to put my injunction in the form of a command. We all prefer to be requested rather than ordered.”
“But I have really learned to love even to be ordered by you, my own, own dearest father!” she said, creeping closer in his embrace.
“Had I been quite sure of that it would have saved me some moments of great alarm and anxiety,” he said.
She looked up inquiringly, and he went on. “As our party came into town, on the side opposite to that where this dreadful accident occurred, a man hailed us with the news that some little girls, out gathering berries, had been attacked by a bear, one of them killed, and others badly hurt.
“That last was a mistake, as we presently learned, but, oh, the pang that shot through my heart with the sudden fear that my dear little daughter might be among the injured, perhaps even the slain one. How I wished that I had positively forbidden you to leave the house at all in my absence!”
“But even then you couldn’t have been sure that I wasn’t with those girls, because there have been times when I’ve disobeyed your most positive commands,” she said, in a remorseful tone.
Her heart leaped with joy at his answering words. “But you have been so perfectly obedient for a long time now, that I have come to have great confidence in your careful observance of any order from me to do or not to do.”
Max, who had lingered in the street trying to learn all the particulars of the sad occurrence, which was the absorbing subject of thought and speech with every one for the time being, now came quietly in, looking thoughtful and distressed.
“They say she’s terribly crushed and mangled,” he said, half-chokingly. “Oh, Lu, what a fright papa and I had, thinking it might be you!”