Those words brought a glad look into his face for the moment.
"Yes," he said, "she is a warm-hearted, affectionate child; a dear child, in spite of her quick temper."
A door had opened and closed: a step was coming down the hall, and a cheerful voice in his rear said, "Captain, I have good news for you: there has been a great, a really wonderful change for the better in the last hour; the child will live, and I hope, I believe, entirely recover from the injuries caused by her fall."
Before the doctor's sentence was finished, the captain had turned, and caught his hand in a vice-like grasp: his eyes filled, his breast heaved with emotions too big for utterance; he shook the hand warmly, dropped it, and, without a word, hurried into the nursery.
He found nearly the whole family gathered there, every face full of a great gladness.
The doctor, however, following him in, speedily cleared the room of all but two or three: only the two Elsies, besides himself and the parents, were left.
Violet looked up at her husband as he entered, with a face so bright and joyous that it recalled the days of their honeymoon.
"Oh, how happy I am! how good God has been to us!" she whispered, as he bent down to kiss her: "our darling is spared to us! See how sweetly she is sleeping!"
"Yes," he returned, in the same low tone, his features working with emotion: "and what double reason for joy and gratitude have I—the father of both the injurer and the injured!"
"Forgive me that I have felt a little hard to Lulu. I can and do forgive her now," she said, her sweet eyes looking penitently into his.