"Yes, papa, I am here," she replied in a trembling voice, full of tears.
"Come to me," he said; and then, as he took her hand, "Why, how cold you are, child," he exclaimed; "I am really sorry you have been so long in that dismal place. I did not intend to punish you so severely, and should not have kept you there more than half an hour, at the very longest; but company came in, and I quite forgot you."
While speaking thus he had led her up to the fire and sat down with her on his knee. "My poor darling!" he said, "these little hands are very cold, let papa rub them; and are your feet cold too?"
"Yes sir," she replied, and he pulled off her shoes and stockings, and moving his chair closer to the fire, held her feet out toward the blaze, and rubbed them in his warm hands.
"You have been crying a good deal," he said, looking keenly into her face.
"Yes, papa," she replied, dropping her face on his breast and bursting into tears; "I thought you were going to leave me there all night."
"Did you? and were you afraid?"
"No, papa, not afraid, because I know you would be sleeping in the next room; and besides, God could take care of me as well in the closet as anywhere else. Is it getting night, papa, or morning?"
"It is beginning to grow dark," he said. "But tell me why you cried, if you were not afraid."
"Partly because I was uncomfortable, papa, but more because I was sorry I had been naughty, and displeased you, and afraid that I can never learn to be good."