"Yes, yes, dear, dear, precious father."
Mr. Travilla stood by with a face full of compassionate tenderness. Putting one hand into her father's, Elsie turned, gave him the other, and together they led her to the carriage and placed her in it. There was a hearty, lingering hand-shaking between the two gentlemen. Mr. Travilla took his seat by Elsie's side, and amid a chorus of good-byes they were whirled rapidly away.
"Cheer up, my dear," said Rose, leaning affectionately on her husband's arm; "it is altogether addition and not subtraction; you have not lost a daughter but gained a son."
"These rooms tell a different tale," he answered with a sigh. "How desolate they seem. But this is no time for the indulgence of sadness. We must return to our guests, and see that all goes merry as a marriage bell with them till the last has taken his departure."
CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.
"My bride,
My wife, my life. O we will walk this world
Yok'd in all exercise of noble aim
And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows."
—TENNYSON'S PRINCESS.
Elsie's tears were falling fast, but an arm as strong and kind as her father's stole quietly about her, a hand as gentle and tender as a woman's drew the weary head to a resting-place on her husband's shoulder, smoothed back the hair from the heated brow, and wiped away the falling drops.
"My wife! my own precious little wife!"
How the word, the tone, thrilled her! her very heart leaped for joy through all the pain of parting from one scarcely less dear. "My husband," she murmured, low and shyly—it seemed so strange to call him that, so almost bold and forward—"my dear, kind friend, to be neither hurt nor angry at my foolish weeping."