"Your Aunt Adelaide thought you didn't care much for ornaments," he remarked, looking much pleased.
"I do when you give them to me, papa," she answered, raising her eyes to his face with one of her sweet, loving smiles.
"I am very glad my present pleases you," he said, "but for fear it should not, I have provided another," and he placed in her hand a very handsomely bound volume of Scott's poems.
"I don't deserve it, papa," she said, coloring deeply, and dropping her eyes on the carpet.
"You shall have it, at any rate," he replied, laying his hand gently on her drooping head; "and now you can finish the 'Lady of the Lake' this afternoon, if you like. His prose works I may perhaps give you at some future day; but I do not choose you should read them for some years to come. But now we will lay this book aside for the present, and have our morning chapter together."
They had finished their devotions, and she was sitting on his knee, waiting for the breakfast-bell to ring.
"When did you find an opportunity to work these without letting me into the secret?" he asked, extending his foot, and turning it from side to side to look at his slipper. "It puzzles me to understand it, since I know that for weeks past you have scarcely been an hour out of my sight during the day—not since you were well enough to sew," he said, smiling down at her.
There was an expression of deep gravity, almost amounting to sadness, on
Elsie's little face, that surprised her father a good deal.
"All, papa!" she murmured, "it makes me feel sad, and glad, too, to look at those slippers."
"Why, darling?" he asked in a tender tone.