Molly fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, while her soft blue eyes gazed pleadingly into his face.
"You would drive me from you?" she asked, with trembling tones; "you yourself would rob me of my last hope, my only support? No, father; you cannot mean it so, you cannot be in earnest! There is no happiness which I would not willingly resign, unless it were to be shared with you! All the suffering and agony which God may choose to inflict upon us will I bear without a murmur, with a firm and unblenching spirit, so long as He tears me not from your side! Father, drive me not from you!"
Deeply touched, the man gazed upon his fair child.
"So said your mother, also," he murmured in a tone of voice scarcely audible, "when her stern father renounced her on my account. She joyfully offered up to me comfort and wealth; through all the bitter renunciations which our poverty forced upon us, her spirit remained unbroken; and even when her eye grew dim with the gathering mists of death, the last breath which escaped from her pale lips was still fraught with blessings, with consolation, with undying love for me!"
"My mother was, indeed, good and pious," answered Molly, "and her memory will always be dear to my heart. The heavenly cheerfulness with which she bore all her sorrows and sufferings will always remain in my remembrance, and encourage me to imitate it. But you are not less dear to me than she was. How could my mother find any sacrifice hard which was to be made for your sake? Her father must have been very wicked when he would have forced her to marry a man who was generally despised, only because he was rich, although she frankly confessed to him that she could never be happy with any one but you. When she told the man whom her father would have forced upon her that she could not love him, and when he in consequence ceased to urge his suit, then her father was so enraged at her candor that he renounced and cursed his only child. But you remained true; you clasped the disinherited girl with more love to your bosom than if she had brought you all the wealth of which her father had deprived her. To render her life less laborious, you have yourself suffered tortures. You have never rested night or day, you have shunned no fatigue, you have avoided no hardships; and when at last she fell sick, and grew weaker and weaker every day, and in spite of all your weary struggling you could not procure for her the little comforts which you thought necessary to lighten her sufferings, then you went secretly and sold your farm for a third of its value, because upon no less stringent terms would the heartless purchaser consent to pay you any ready money upon it, and permit you still to remain in possession of it until the dying wife should have closed her eyes in death. For the physician had already said she must soon die, and more significantly than even the prophecy of the skilful doctor did her always increasing weakness whisper it to our sinking hearts. You would not suffer the tranquillity of her rapidly passing hours to be broken, and thus she was never informed of the heavy sacrifice you had made to insure her comfort. Softly she slumbered her life away, for she was never tortured by any fears for the future of her loved ones."
"Why do you stop, Molly?" vividly asked the father, as the daughter suddenly ceased in her narration. "O, go on! go on! Confess at once that you have often thought whether your father had not been unwise thus to sacrifice his little farm, which was all he possessed; whether he had not been imprudent to give up his only hope of subsistence for himself and his children, to keep alive, only for a few days longer, the flickering flame of life in the heart of the wife, who, under all possible circumstances of alleviation, was doomed soon to die?"
"Is it possible that you can think so meanly of me?" said Molly, hastily, while the indignant blood rushed to her pale cheek, which glowed for a moment like the summer rose.
"If a thought so degrading has ever once flitted through my soul, may God and the Virgin forsake me in my hour of need!"
A loud cry from Kitty now interrupted them. Tired of the long conversation of which she could understand so little, the child, who had not before ventured to leave the spot upon which her sister had seated her, had at last risen, and, in her attempt to approach the speakers, had fallen over the sack which her father had thrown on the floor on his entrance.
"Don't cry, darling," said the soft voice of Molly, as she lovingly caressed the little girl, who was trying to dry the ever-gushing tears with the corner of her apron. "You have not hurt yourself very much, have you, Kitty? It don't pain you now, does it, love? Don't cry any more, and I will tell you what is in the sack over which you fell. May be we shall find some calico in it to make a little frock for you, or some wool to knit stockings for you. I will make them long and thick for you, so that your poor feet will no longer be frozen." So saying, Molly opened the sack, but she quickly drew her hand out again.