BY MRS. W. J. HAYS.
"Granny, please tell me more about my father," pleaded a little voice in the gathering darkness.
"Ah, child, it hurts me to talk of him. The sea has been his bed, I doubt not, this many a long day."
"But you were telling me how blithe and brave he was, and what merry songs he sang. What made him go to sea?"
"All lads think they can do well on the water. They tire of the fields and the plough. But your father was no fool to think a sailor's life an easy one. He did not go until your mother died, and then he was not brave enough to bear sorrow as we poor women have to do."
The child asked no more, but knit away at the stocking her grandmother had set up for her.
Presently the old woman said, with a shiver: "It's growing cold; there's snow in the air. Put some more sticks on, Peggy."
The child arose and made a pretense of adding to the fire, for there was no more wood, and she had not the heart to say so. Then taking off a little shawl from her shoulders, she put it about those of her granny.
But the old woman had that keenness of perception which is so often a merciful compensation to the blind.
"Child," she said, "you are robbing yourself. The warmth of your own little heart is in this shawl. Is there no more wood?"