Ella’s tap revealed the fact that her father was awake.
“Come in,” he said, his voice sounding rather sharp and irritable.
“Cross old thing,” muttered Ella to herself, “I wish I hadn’t come down. Can I do anything for you, papa?” she asked aloud as she entered the room. “Would you like me to read to you, perhaps?”
Colonel St Quentin was lying on a couch by the fire; his books and newspapers on a little stand beside him. He glanced at Ella hesitatingly. He was feeling very lost and dull without his two elder daughters, and his eyes were tired.
“No, thank you,” he began to say, but his tone was not very decided.
“I—I think I read aloud pretty well,” the girl went on. Her quick impressionable nature was touched by her father’s looks: he was very pale, and she knew that he had suffered a good deal. “How selfish of them to have left him,” was her next reflection. “Do let me try, papa,” she went on more eagerly and naturally, “it must be rather dull for you alone, when you can’t get about.”
“And for you too, my dear,” he said kindly. “What have you been doing with yourself all day—since your sisters left, I mean?”
Ella grew rather red.
“Oh,” she replied, “I’ve been practising, and doing my French and German—much the same as usual. And then I’ve been sewing.”
It did not sound very lively. The “much as usual,” struck Colonel St Quentin too, and again he glanced at his youngest daughter. It struck him that she looked paler and thinner than formerly, and less bright and spirited. The fact was that Ella was blue and pinched with having sat in her fireless room for more than an hour, but this her father did not know. He moved uneasily on his couch.