Then going back to the former topic of discourse. “It’ll be a great deal worse for those children to lose their mother than it was for us to lose ours (though ours was so, so much nicer), for they won’t have a good father left like we have. But O papa, it did seem so dreadful when you had to leave us and go off to sea so soon after mamma was buried.”
“Yes,” he replied, in moved tones, “dreadful to me as well as to my children!”
“But that’s all over now, and we can have you with us all the time; and in a dear, sweet home of our own,” she cried, joyously.
“And a new mamma who is very sweet and kind to my once motherless children, I think.”
“Yes, papa, she is; and it’s very nice to have such a pretty, gentle lady to—to do the honors of the house. That’s what people call it, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he returned, laughing in an amused way.
“And I s’pose you’re a good deal happier than you would be without her?”
“Indeed, I am! very much happier.”
Lulu felt a burning desire to ask if he had loved her mother as dearly as he did this second wife, but did not dare venture quite so far. She asked another question instead.
“Papa, did you give those children shoes and stockings?”