"Father," cried Ernestine, taking his lame hand that he could not withdraw from her. "Father, do not send me away from you. I will be good,--help me to be so. I cannot be good if you are always harsh to me. I saw to-day how all the children have parents who love them. I only am disliked by every one, and yet I have a heart too, and would love to see kind looks and hear kind words. I will not cry ever any more, if you will not make me cry, and I will try my best to be just like a boy, that you may not be sorry any more that I am a girl. Ah, father, it seems to-day as if the dear God in heaven had told me what I long for. Love, father, love,--ah, give me some, and take pity upon your poor ugly child!"
The invalid had turned towards the child again, and was staring at her in amazement, with lack-lustre eyes; it seemed as if some unbidden feeling were struggling for utterance from the depths of his moral and physical degradation; his breath came quick, he tried to speak. Ernestine did not venture to look at him; a strong odour of brandy told her that her father's face was near her own, but this odour was so utterly disgusting to her that she involuntarily recoiled, and thus avoided the lips that would perhaps have bestowed upon her the first kiss that she had ever in her life received from them. The invalid must have known this, for he turned away again, muttering something unintelligible. After a long pause, he felt for a tumbler that stood on a table beside his bed, but it was empty. "I'm thirsty!" he said peevishly. "Shall I bring you some water, father?" asked Ernestine. The sick man made a gesture of disgust "No! but you can go up to your uncle and tell him to send me that medicine that he spoke of; he will know what I want. But ask him only,--do you hear?--him only. And tell no one that I sent you, or you shall suffer for it, I promise you. And now go quickly: I'm tortured with thirst!"
Ernestine arose from her knees, and looked at her father with the grief that we feel when we have lavished our best, our most sacred emotions upon an unworthy object. Hitherto she had required nothing of him; to-day, for the first time, as she looked around for some one to whose love, in her loneliness, she possessed a right, it had occurred to her that she had a father. She had turned to him with an overflowing heart, and had found a drunkard, who had resigned all claims to respect, both as a man and a father. Mute and crushed alike physically and mentally, she slipped out and up the stairs to her uncle. She was to bring brandy to the sick man, although she remembered that the physician had forbidden all heating drinks; but she must fulfil her father's commands, or receive the cruellest treatment at his hands. She entered her uncle's room, slowly and timidly; she was afraid of his wife. But Bertha had gone to bed; there was no one in the room but Leuthold, who was standing by the open window, to the frame of which he had screwed a long tube.
"Ah, little Ernestine, have you come so late to see your uncle?" he said kindly.
"Uncle, what is that?" asked Ernestine, forgetting her errand in her wonder at the strange instrument.
"That is a telescope," her uncle informed her.
"What are you doing with it?" she asked further.
"I am looking into the moon, my child."
"Ah! can you do that?" she cried, in the greatest amazement.
"Certainly I can. Would you like to look through it?"