“Papa—papa has—forbidden me to go there, except when—when he is present,” sobbed the little girl, dropping her work to hide her blushing face in her hands.
“Then never mind, dear child, I should not have asked you if I had known that,” Rose said, in an undertone full of sympathy and affection. “I shall go myself.”
Excusing herself to Mr. Travilla, she left the room.
He seemed scarcely to hear her excuse, so entirely was he taken up with pitying tenderness toward the weeping, mortified, embarrassed child.
“My dear little friend,” he said, drawing near and softly touching the shining curls of the bowed head, “what can I do to help and comfort you?”
“You are very kind,” she sobbed, “but no one can help me.”
“I have some influence with your papa,” he said, “and would gladly use it in your behalf, if—if your trouble is that you have angered or displeased him. But I know he loves you very, very dearly, and surely, whatever you may have done, he will forgive and take you back into favor, if you tell him you are sorry.”
“Papa is not angry with me now,” she said, wiping away her tears, and looking up earnestly into her friend’s face, “but,” and again her face flushed crimson and her eyes fell, while the tears rolled down her cheeks—“oh, you would hardly believe how very, very naughty and disobedient I was yesterday!”
“No, I don’t know how to believe it. But your papa is—”
He left the sentence unfinished; but Elsie knew intuitively his thought—that her father was very strict and severe; and with a sudden generous resolve to prove that he was not, she told Mr. Travilla the whole truth, though deeply ashamed to have him know of her wrong-doing.