"It was just for everybody in a lump," said Molly, sighing wearily. "Not for you or me, or anybody in particular; at least not anybody that's living now; because we weren't made then; so how could he?"
"But mamma says he knew he was going to make us, just the same as he does now; and that he thought of each one, and loved and died for each one just as much as if there was only one."
"Well, it's queer if he loved me so well as that, and yet would let me fall and be so awfully injured. What's this? You didn't have it before you came North," taking hold of the gold chain about Elsie's neck.
Out came the little watch and Elsie told about the aching tooth and the trip to New York to have it extracted.
"Seems to me," was Molly's comment, "you have all the good things: such a nice mother and everything else. Such a good father too, and mine was killed when I was a little bit of a thing; and mother's so cross.
"But Dick's good to me; dear old Dick," she added, looking up at him with glistening eyes as he came in and going up to her couch, asked how she was.
"You'd better go to sleep now," he said. "You've been talking quite awhile, haven't you?"
At that Elsie slipped quietly away and went in search of her mother.
She found her alone on the veranda looking out meditatively upon the restless moonlit waters of the sea.
"Mamma," said the child softly, "I should like a stroll on the beach with you. Can we go alone? I want to talk with you about something."