"But you don't mind that, do you?" he asked curiously.
She looked at him with innocent, wondering eyes. "Elsie loves Jesus; Elsie wants Jesus to love her and make her His little lamb; she asks Him to do it every day."
"Stuff!" he muttered, in a tone of annoyance; but tears of joy and thankfulness welled up in Mildred's eyes.
"Blessed baby!" she thought, "you will not have a lonely, loveless life if you have so soon begun to seek the dear Saviour. Ah, how my mother's heart will rejoice to hear this!"
On coming to the table the little one had folded her tiny hands, and bending with closed eyes over her plate, murmured a short grace; but Mr. Dinsmore, busying himself in carving a fowl, did not seem to notice it; yet it had not escaped him; he was watching the child furtively, and with far more interest than he would have liked to own.
"I'm afraid they're making a canting hypocrite of her," he said to Mildred when they had retired to the drawing-room.
"O, uncle, do not say that!" exclaimed Mildred. "It is just the way my dear mother, whom you admire so much, trains and teaches her children."
"Ah!" he said, "then I shall have to retract."
"What pretty manners she has, uncle; both at the table and elsewhere," remarked Mildred; "she handles knife, fork and spoon as deftly as possible, and is so gentle and refined in all she does and says."
"Yes," he said with some pride, "I trust an uncouth, ill-mannered Dinsmore might be considered an anomaly, indeed."