"You have not been very lazy since you have been here," said his wife.
"Well, I have seen all there is to be seen; and now I am ready for something else. Aren't you?"
"But, father," said Dolly, "I suppose, just because Sorrento is what you call a lazy place it is good for mother."
"Change is good for her too—hey, wife?"
"You will have a change next week, father; you know we are going for that visit to the Thayers."
"We shall not want to stay there long," said Mr. Copley; "and then we'll move."
Nobody answered. Dolly looked out sorrowfully upon the beautiful bright water. Sorrento had been a place of peace to her. Must she go so soon? The scent of myrtles and roses and oranges came in bewilderingly at the open window, pleading the cause of "lazy" Sorrento with wonderfully persuasive flatteries. Was there any other place in the world so sweet? Dolly clung to it, in heart; yearned towards it; the glories of the southern sun were what she had never imagined, and she longed to stay to enjoy and wonder at them. The fruits, the flowers, the sunny air, the fulness and variedness of the colouring on land and sea, the leisure and luxury of bountiful nature,—Dolly was loath, loath to leave them all. No other Sorrento, she was ready to believe, would ever reveal itself to her vision; and she shrank a little from the somewhat rough way she had been travelling before and must travel again. And now in the further way, Rupert, her helper and standby, would not be with her. Then again came the words of Christmas Eve to her—"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"—and with the words came the recollection of the new bit of service Dolly had found to do in her return and answer to that love. Yet she hesitated, and her heart began to beat faster, and she made no move until her father began to ask if it were not time to leave the moonlight and go to bed. Dolly came from the window, then to the table where the lowered lamp stood.
"Mother and father, I should like to do something," she said with an interrupted breath. "Would you mind—may I—will you let me read a chapter to you before we go?"
"A chapter of what?" said her father; though he knew well enough.
"The Bible."