“Yes,” said Amabel, “and I like to stay with Ellen, but—but—I want to see my mamma and papa,” she wailed, suddenly, in the lowest and most pitiful wail imaginable.
“Poor little darling,” said Robert, stroking her flaxen hair. Amabel looked up at him with her little face all distorted with grief.
“If you had been my papa, would you have gone away and left Amabel?” she asked, quiveringly. Robert gathered her to him in a strong clasp of protection.
“No, you little darling, I never should,” he cried, fervently.
At that moment he wished devoutly that he had the handling of the man who had deserted this child.
“I like you most as well as my own papa,” said Amabel. “You ain't so big as my papa.” She said that in a tone of evident disparagement.
Then the sitting-room door opened, and Fanny and Ellen and Andrew appeared, the last with a great basket of wood and kindlings.
Robert set down Amabel, and sprang to his feet to greet Andrew and Ellen. Andrew, after depositing his basket beside the stove, shook hands with a sort of sad awkwardness. Robert saw that the man had aged immeasurably since he had last seen him.
“It is a cold night, Mr. Brewster,” he said, and knew the moment he said it that it was not a happy remark.
“It is pretty cold,” agreed Andrew, “and it's cold here in this room.”