BY MARION HARLAND.
CHAPTER X.
Felicia Grigsby sat alone by the fire in her room on the afternoon of December 24. A book was open upon her lap, but she was not reading. Her hands were thin and white; her gray eyes were unnaturally large and dark in a face that had wasted until it looked like an elf's. She had lain in bed for six weeks, and was still so weak that her father had carried her up and down stairs to her meals.
He had been very kind to her throughout her illness, but never tender, and he was always grave nowadays. Flea was thinking of these and other puzzling things this afternoon. While she thought, two tears arose and enlarged in her eyes, until their weight carried them over the lower lids, and they plashed down upon the book. The first snow-storm of the season was driving at a sharp slant past the windows; the wind cried in the chimney in a low-spirited, feeble-minded way; the fire kept up heart, and spat snappishly as stray hailstones and snowflakes flew down the throat of the chimney.
Flea kicked one foot out of the blanket shawl laid over her lap, and moaned fretfully: "I don't care for anything or anybody, and nobody cares whether I live or die!"
The door opened and her father came in. He looked unusually grave even for him. He laid more logs on the fire, and stirred the coals below the blazing fore-stick. "Is it too hot for you?" he asked, as the fire leaped up with a greedy roar.
"A little," Flea said, shielding her eyes with her hand.
Her father took hold of her rocking-chair with one hand, the cricket on which her feet rested with the other, and lifted her away from the flaring flames. Then he rearranged the covering over her knees and feet. It was a checked blanket shawl, red and green, that belonged to Mrs. Grigsby. It was always brought out when an invalid was able to sit up, or not quite ill enough to be put to bed. In Flea's mind it was joined with the remembered taste of jalap, Epsom-salts, castor oil, and tansy tea. The checks were just two inches square. She had measured them a hundred times. Her mother used to give her medicine; her father read aloud to her when she had the measles, and chills and fever after the measles.
She got hold of his hand and laid her face against it with a sob that seemed to bring her heart up with it.
"Father! you haven't called me 'lassie' all the time I've been sick. Don't you love me any more?"