“My darling, I too am a sinner,” he said with emotion, holding her close to his heart; “I too have been taking a retrospective view of the past year, and I am not too proud to acknowledge to my own little daughter that I fear that I have sinned even against her.”
She lifted her head to look into his face in wide-eyed astonishment.
“Yes,” he sighed, “I have been recalling the rebuke I administered to you the first time we met after the baby’s sad fall, and it seems to me now that my words were unnecessarily severe, even cruel.
“I had just come from my apparently dying babe and its heart-broken mother, and dearly as I have always loved my eldest daughter, my anger was stirred against her at that moment, as the guilty cause of all that suffering and distress.
“But I ought to have seen that she was already bowed down with grief and remorse, and have been more merciful. My dear child, will you forgive your father for his extreme severity?”
“No, papa, I—I can’t,” she murmured, her head drooping so low again that he could not see the expression of her countenance.
“You can not?” he sighed, in surprise and disappointment; “well, my dear child, I can hardly blame you, and I certainly would not have you say what you do not feel; but I had hoped your love for me was sufficient to prompt a different reply.”
“Papa, you don’t understand,” she cried, suddenly lifting her head, throwing her arms round his neck and laying her cheek to his. “Its because I’ve nothing to forgive. I deserved it all; every word of it; you had a right to say those words too, and they did me good, for it has helped me many a time to conquer my temper—thinking how dreadful to be any thing but a blessing to you, my own, dear, dear, dearest father!”
“Thank you, my darling,” he responded, in moved tones; “and now when death has parted us there will, I trust, be no sting for the survivor in the memory of those words, as I felt that there surely would be if they were left unretracted.”
“Papa, don’t talk of death parting us,” she said in tremulous tones, “I can’t bear to think of it.”