The two bent over the sleeping babe, listening to its gentle breathing.
"Ah, papa, I feel so rich! you don't know how I love her!" whispered Elsie.
"Don't I, my daughter? don't I know how I love you?" And his eyes turned with yearning affection upon her face, then back to that of the little one. "Six weeks old to-day, and a very cherub for beauty. Aunt Chloe tells me she is precisely my daughter over again, and I feel as if I had now an opportunity to recover what I lost in not having my first-born with me from her birth. Little Elsie, grandpa feels that you are his; his precious treasure."
The young mother's eyes grew misty with a strange mixture of emotion, in which love and joy were the deepest and strongest. Her arm stole round her father's neck.
"Dear papa, how nice of you to love her so; my precious darling. She is yours, too, almost as much as Edward's and mine. And I am sure if we should be taken away and you and she be left, you would be the the same good father to her you have been to me."
"Much better, I hope. My dear daughter, I was far too hard with you at times. But I know you have forgiven it all long ago."
"Papa, dear papa, please don't ever again talk of—of forgiveness from me; I was your own, and I believe you always did what you thought was for my good; and oh, what you have been, and are to me, no tongue can tell."
"Or you to me, my own beloved child," he answered with emotion.
The babe stirred, and opened its eyes with a little, "Coo, coo."
"Let me take her," said Mr. Dinsmore, turning back the cover and gently lifting her from her cozy nest.