"Oh, mother," said Susie, with the tears dropping down her cheeks, as she hid her face in her mother's lap, "Ned Graham said such a cruel thing about me," and here the sobs choked her voice so that she could hardly speak; "He said that I wasn't anybody, and that father drinks."
"My poor little girl," Mrs. Ellet said, very sadly. There were tears in her eyes, too. Such taunts as this were nothing new in that family.
"Oh, mother," Susie said, as she lifted her face, wet with tears, from her mother's lap, "I can't bear to have them say so, and act just as if I had done something wicked. I wish father wouldn't drink! Do you suppose he'll ever leave it off?"
"I hope so," Mrs. Ellet answered, as she kissed Susie's face where the tears clung like drops of dew on a rose. "I pray that he may break off the habit, and I can do nothing but pray, and leave the rest to God."
That night Mr. Ellet came home to supper, as usual. He was a hard-working man, and a good neighbor. So everybody said, but he had the habit of intemperance so firmly fixed upon him that everybody thought he would end his days in the drunkard's grave. Susie kissed him when he came through the gate, as she always did, but there was something in her face that went to his heart. A look so sad, and full of touching sorrow for one so young as she!
"What ails my little girl?" he asked as he patted her curly head.
"I can't tell you, father," she answered, slowly.
"Why?" he asked.