Caro shook her curls vigorously, and then leaning forward she said plaintively, “Grandpa—please don’t let Aunt Charlotte make me sleep in the dark.”
“I fear you are a foolish little girl,” replied the president meaning to look stern, but succeeding only in smiling fondly at the witch on the pillar, who appropriated the smile and ignored the words.
“You know God made the darkness, Caro,” he continued, conscious that the remark was not quite original.
“Yes—” unwillingly—then “but grandpa, He put stars in His dark!”
As Dr. Barrows walked down the street he reflected that he should have but a divided mind to give to seminary matters, if the present state of affairs continued, and the seminary needed his close attention just now.
It was two weeks since his granddaughter had arrived to spend several months in his home while her father and mother were traveling. “I am afraid we have spoiled her a little,” his daughter Elinor wrote, “and hard as it is for me to give her up I feel sure it will be good for her to be in Aunt Charlotte’s hands for a time. I know you will love her and forgive her little failings, as you always did those of—
“Your devoted daughter.”
Love her! he was fairly bewitched by her. He had thought a child in the house after so many years of quiet might be annoying, but on the contrary he would have liked to have her always with him.
Aunt Charlotte was ready and anxious to do anything and everything for her dear Elinor’s child, but somehow her theories which had worked so well with her brother’s children did not seem to fit the next generation.
The truth was that in her southern home Caro had been under a very different rule. Mammy ’Riah who had nursed her father before her, had, to use her own words “Taught her pretty manners,” and petted and scolded and worshipped her. The result puzzled Aunt Charlotte and delighted her brother.