"Dear papa how kind you are! I am sure I deserve a great deal worse punishment than that," she exclaimed, raising her head and looking up gratefully and lovingly into his face, "but I am very, very sorry for my disobedience; will you please forgive me?"
"I will, daughter," and he bent down and kissed her lips.
"Now go," he said, "and get your cloak and hood. I think we will still have time for a little stroll through the grounds before dark."
Elsie had very little to say during their walk, but moved silently along by her father's side, with her hand clasped in his; and he, too, seemed unusually abstracted.
It was quite dusk when they entered the house again, and when the little girl returned to the study, after Chloe had taken off her wrappings, she found her father seated in an easy-chair, drawn up on one side of a bright wood fire that was blazing and crackling on the hearth.
Elsie dearly loved the twilight hour, and it was one of her greatest pleasures to climb upon her father's knee and sit there talking or singing, or perhaps, oftener, just laying her head down on his breast and watching the play of the fire-light on the carpet, or the leaping of the flame hither and thither.
Mr. Dinsmore sat leaning back in his chair, apparently in deep thought, and did not hear Elsie's light step.
She paused for one instant in the doorway, casting a wistful, longing look at him, then, with a little sigh, walked softly to the other side of the fire-place, and seated herself in her little rocking-chair.
For several minutes she sat very quietly gazing into the fire, her little face wearing a very sober, thoughtful look. But she was startled out of her reverie by the sound of her father's voice.
"Why am I not to have my little girl on my knee to-night?" he was asking.