"Then you would be man, fish, bird, and salamander all at once," said Leuthold, smiling in surprise at the girl's earnest tone. "Well, well, it might be all very delightful at sixteen, but a man as aged as your old father is thankful if he can live respectably upon the earth only."
"My old father!" laughed Gretchen, hastening to his side again--"you darling papa, how can you call yourself aged? Come with me to the window, the prospect there will make you twenty years younger." She drew him towards it. "It is very strange, I think, but certainly a new revelation of beauty should make the old younger, and the young older. It is a new experience for the young, and experience always makes us mature. It is a memory for the old, for they are sure to have seen something of the kind in previous years, and it carries them back to the earlier and youthful sensations that it first awakened in them. Such a memory should lighten the soul of ten years at least."
Leuthold looked at his daughter with unfeigned surprise. "Child, where did you learn all that?"
"Why, out of some book that I have read, I suppose," said Gretchen modestly. "One always remembers something, you know."
"Blessed be the day that gave you to me,--you are all that I have."
There was a knock at the door, and the servant entered with the bill of fare and the newspapers.
"Excuse me, sir, for keeping you waiting. I had to go to Madame for to-day's paper."
"No matter," said Leuthold, almost gaily. His talk with his daughter had done him good.
He ordered a little supper, and, when the man left the room, seated himself on a sofa and began to read.
Gretchen took her work,--she was just at the age when affection finds instant pleasure in embroidering or crocheting some article for the beloved object. So she sat and sewed diligently upon a letter-case that she was embroidering for her father while he read. Now and then she turned and looked out of the window, to be sure that all the splendour there had not vanished.