"I am not at all afraid to trust you, Aunt Adelaide, nor do I think there is any danger of papa's finding it out," Elsie answered earnestly; "but I should know it myself, and God would know it, too, and you know he has commanded me to obey my father in everything that is not wrong; and I must obey him, no matter how hard it is."
"Well, you are a strange child," said Adelaide, as she returned the letter to her pocket and rose to leave the room; "such a compound of obedience and disobedience I don't pretend to understand."
Elsie was beginning to explain, but Adelaide stopped her, saying she had no time to listen, and hastily quitted the room.
Elsie brushed away a tear and took up her book again—for she had been engaged in preparing a lesson for the next day, when interrupted by this unexpected visit from her aunt.
Adelaide went directly to her brother's door, and receiving an invitation to enter in answer to her knock, was the next instant standing by his side, with Miss Allison's letter in her hand.
"I've come, Horace," she said in a lively tone, "to seek from you a reward of virtue in a certain little friend of mine; and because you alone can bestow it, I come to you on her behalf, even at the expense of having to confess a sin of my own."
"Well, take a seat, won't you?" he said good-humoredly, laying down his book and handing her a chair, "and then speak out at once, and tell me what you mean by all this nonsense."
"First for my own confession then," she answered laughingly, accepting the offered seat. "I received a letter this morning from my friend, Rose Allison, enclosing one to your little Elsie."
He began to listen with close attention, while a slight frown gathered on his brow.
"Now, Horace," his sister went on, "though I approve in the main of your management of that child—which, by the way, I presume, is not of the least consequence to you—yet I must say I have thought it right hard you should deprive her of Rose's letters. So I carried this one, and offered it to her, assuring her that you should never know anything about it; but what do you think?—the little goose actually refused to touch it without papa's permission. She must obey him, she said, no matter how hard it was, whenever he did not bid her do anything wrong. And now, Horace," she concluded, "I want you to give me the pleasure of carrying this letter to her, with your permission to read it. I'm sure she deserves it."