“So I asked her, ‘Why don’t you go and kiss him? that’s the way I do to my father, and he always looks pleased and kisses me back.’
“‘Oh, I wish I dared!’ she said, ‘but I don’t for I am afraid he wouldn’t like it.’”
“I should be more grieved than I can tell if I ever had reason to think one of my children felt so toward me,” the captain said, stroking Lulu’s hair caressingly, while his eyes looked fondly into hers.
“You need never be at all afraid, daughter, to come to your father to offer or ask for a caress.”
“Unless I’ve been naughty?” she said, half inquiringly, half in assertion.
“No, not even then, if you are ready to say you are sorry and do not intend to offend in the same way again.
“I noticed that you were unusually quiet on the way home from church; would you like to tell me what you were thinking about?”
“First about what the minister had been saying, papa; you know he reminded us that this was the last Sunday of the old year, and said we should think how we had spent it and repent of all the wrong things and resolve that with God’s help we would live better next year.
“So I tried to do it. I mean to think how I’d been behaving all the year; and I found it had been a very, very bad year with me,” she went on, blushing and hanging her head: “all that badness at Viamede was after New Year’s day was past, and then I did such a terrible thing at Ion.
“O, papa, I most wonder you can be fond of me though I am your very own child!” she exclaimed, her head sinking still lower, while her cheeks were dyed with blushes.