Then, after a pause, he added: “I wish to say good-bye to my little girls. Will you have them brought to me?”
Presently there entered the room two beautiful children, one about twelve years old, and the other five. They came hand in hand, laughing, and ran across to their father’s bed, gleefully ignorant of the significance of the still room, and the purple hangings, and the white figure in the bed.
“Daddy! daddy!” they cried, climbing upon the bed. “What a time it is since we saw you!... Tell us a story right away.”
The father took the long brown-gold curls of the elder girl in his hands, and stroked the sunshine head of the little one. “Kiddies,” he said, after a while, “your daddy is going on a long journey. Will you think of him and love him while he is gone?”
“Where are you going, daddy?” asked the two young voices.
“O ever so far! It’s a country called ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon.’”
“O take us with you, daddy. It sounds such a lovely place.”
“I cannot take you with me, kiddies—but perhaps mother and you and I will meet there one of these days ... if we’re all very good!”
“I wish we could go with you now, daddy,” said the elder girl; and the younger, out of sheer reverence for her elder sister, repeated her.
“I wish we could go with you now, daddy,” she said.