“So you think now,” he said, “but I am not at all sure that your good resolution would last for any length of time; you may be quite as willful and rebellious to-morrow as you have been to-day. You need, and must have the lesson I hope you will gain by being left to be, for a time, a law to yourself.
“Understand that I do not propose to subject you to any harsh treatment; on the contrary I shall be as polite and as considerate of your comfort as if you were my guest.”
“I don’t want to be company!” she exclaimed. “I don’t want you to be polite to me! I want you to punish me, and then let me be your very own child, just as I always have been! O, papa, please, please do!”
“It is very far from being a pleasure to me to punish you,” he returned, again sighing deeply as he spoke, “and I have quite decided to try this other plan. I do not expect to enjoy it, either, any more than you will; it will be a sad thing to me to have to do without the loving attentions and caresses of my dear little daughter Lulu, even for four days.”
She looked up into his face in blank dismay.
“O, papa, you can’t mean that I am not to kiss you, or have you kiss me, for four whole days? I could never, never stand it!”
“I do not say that; I should not refuse a kiss to a little girl visitor, should she ask for it—and I might even offer her one—but I certainly should not expect to treat her, or be treated by her, with the same affectionate familiarity which you and I have been accustomed to use toward each other.”
“Oh, I sha’n’t know how to behave to you at all!” she cried despairingly.
“When in doubt, you will only have to consider how you would expect a little girl visitor—Eva, for instance—to act toward me. Now you may go, for I have not time to talk any more to you at present.”
“Am I to go to my own room and stay there?”