“Well, well, accidents will happen; and you shall tell me all about it to-morrow if you feel equal to the task. Now I shall sit beside you until you go to sleep.”
“How nice, dear papa!” she exclaimed, “it more than pays for my slight hurts and my fright, for oh, I was frightened when I felt myself falling.”
“There! don’t talk about it any more to-night,” he said, holding her close to his heart for an instant, then laying her in her bed.
“Papa,” she asked, “must I say my prayers in bed?”
“For to-night I think you must; and they need not be very long; we are not heard for our much speaking.”
It was not long ere she slept; until then he sat beside the bed, holding her hand in his and singing softly one of her favorite hymns.
Then enjoining it upon the old nurse to watch her carefully, and if she woke and seemed in pain to send at once for him, he returned to his guests.
He wanted her without a bed-fellow that night that he might feel free to go to her when he would, so Annis occupied a couch in Mildred’s dressing-room.
Elsie was still sleeping sweetly when her father came in and stood by her bed the last thing before seeking his own, and he always found her so when he stole softly in again two or three times during the night.
She woke at her usual hour in the morning, and hearing him moving quietly about in the next room, called softly to him, “Merry Christmas, dear papa.”