"Well, yes; I suppose so. Are you willing to share your teacher with Rosie and Walter, daughter mine?" he asked, softly stroking Lulu's hair.
"My teacher, but not my father, you dear papa," returned Lulu, patting his cheek, then holding up her face for a kiss, which he gave heartily and repeated more than once.
"What do you think, Mamma Vi, of your husband having an amanuensis?" he continued, affectionately squeezing Lulu's hand, which he had taken in his. "My correspondence was disposed of to-day with most unusual and unexpected ease. I would read a letter, tell my amanuensis the reply I wished to make, and she would write it off on the typewriter while I examined the next epistle, asking few directions and making scarcely any mistakes."
"Lulu did it?" Violet exclaimed in surprise "Why, Lu, I am both astonished and delighted!"
"Thank you, Mamma Vi; and I am very glad that I can help my dear, kind father, who does so much for me," Lulu answered, putting her arm round his neck, and laying her cheek to his. "Oh, I couldn't possibly do half enough for him! but I hope I may be of a great deal of use to him some of these days."
"You are that already, dear child," he said; "so useful and so dear that your father would not know how to do without you."
"How good in you to say that, dear papa; but I am sure it would be ten times worse for me to be without you," she returned. "Oh, I'm glad I'm not a boy, to have to go away from you."
"I am glad too," he responded; "glad that my children are neither all boys nor all girls. It is quite delightful, I think, to have some of each."
"Yes, sir; and I think it's delightful to have both brothers and sisters when they are of as good a sort as mine are, though I've seen some I'd be sorry to have."
"As I have seen some children that I should be sorry, I think, to call my own. Yet if they were mine I would probably love them dearly, and perhaps not see their faults; or rather love them in spite of their naughtiness."