MARTHA FINLEY Ultimate Collection – Timeless Children Classics & Other Novels. Finley Martha
your side. How are you to-day?"
"I think I never felt better in my life, papa; so strong and well that it seems absurd to be taking such care of myself."
"Not at all; you must do it. You seem to be alone with your babe. I hope you never lift her?"
"No, sir, not yet. That I shall not has been my husband's second order. Mammy is within easy call, just in the next room, and will come the instant she is wanted."
"Let me look at her; unless you think it will disturb her rest."
"Oh, no, sir." And the young mother gently drew aside the curtain of the crib.
The two bent over the sleeping babe, listening to its gentle breathing.
"Ah, papa, I feel so rich! you don't know how I love her!" whispered Elsie.
"Don't I, my daughter? don't I know how I love you?" And his eyes turned with yearning affection upon her face, then back to that of the little one. "Six weeks old to-day, and a very cherub for beauty. Aunt Chloe tells me she is precisely my daughter over again, and I feel as if I had now an opportunity to recover what I lost in not having my first-born with me from her birth. Little Elsie, grandpa feels that you are his; his precious treasure."
The young mother's eyes grew misty with a strange mixture of emotion, in which love and joy were the deepest and strongest. Her arm stole round her father's neck.
"Dear papa, how nice of you to love her so; my precious darling. She is yours, too, almost as much as Edward's and mine. And I am sure if we should be taken away and you and she be left, you would be the the same good father to her you have been to me."
"Much better, I hope. My dear daughter, I was far too hard with you at times. But I know you have forgiven it all long ago."
"Papa, dear papa, please don't ever again talk of—of forgiveness from me; I was your own, and I believe you always did what you thought was for my good; and oh, what you have been, and are to me, no tongue can tell."
"Or you to me, my own beloved child," he answered with emotion.
The babe stirred, and opened its eyes with a little, "Coo, coo."
"Let me take her," said Mr. Dinsmore, turning back the cover and gently lifting her from her cozy nest.
Elsie lay back among her cushions again, watching with delighted eyes as her father held and handled the wee body as deftly as the most competent child's nurse.
It was a very beautiful babe; the complexion soft, smooth, and very fair, with a faint pink tinge; the little, finely formed head covered with rings of golden hair that would some day change to the darker shade of her mother's, whose regular features and large, soft brown eyes she inherited also.
"Sweet little flower blossomed into this world of sin and sorrow! Elsie, dearest, remember that she is not absolutely yours, her father's, or mine; but only lent you a little while to be trained up for the Lord."
"Yes, papa, I know," she answered with emotion, "and I gave her to Him even before her birth."
"I hope she will prove as like you in temper and disposition as she bids fair to be in looks."
"Papa, I should like her to be much better than I was."
He shook his head with a half-incredulous smile. "That could hardly be, if she has any human nature at all."
"Ah, papa, you forget how often I used to be naughty and disobedient; how often you had to punish me; particularly in that first year after you returned from Europe."
A look of pain crossed his features. "Daughter, dear, I am full of remorse when I think of that time. I fully deserved the epithet Travilla once bestowed upon me in his righteous indignation at my cruelty to my gentle, sensitive little girl."
"What was that, papa?" she asked, with a look of wonder and surprise.
"Dinsmore, you're a brute!"
"Papa, how could he say that!" and the fair face flushed with momentary excitement and anger towards the father of her child, whom she so thoroughly respected ind so dearly loved.
"Ah, don't be angry with him," said Mr. Dinsmore; "I was the culprit. You cannot have forgotten your fall from the piano-stool which came so near making me childless? It was he who ran in first, lifted you, and laid you on the sofa with the blood streaming from the wounded temple over your curls and your white dress. Ah, I can never forget the sad sight, or the pang that shot through my heart with the thought that you were dead. It was as he laid you down that Travilla turned to me with those indignant words, and I felt that I fully deserved them. And yet I was even more cruel afterwards, when next you refused to obey when I bade you offend against your conscience."
"Don't let us think or talk of it any more, dear father; I love far better to dwell upon the long years that followed, full of the tenderest care and kindness. You certainly can find nothing to blame yourself with in them."
"Yes; I governed you too much. It would probably have ruined a less amiable temper, a less loving heart, than yours. It is well for parents to be sometimes a little blind to trivial faults. And I was so strict, so stern, so arbitrary, so severe. My dear, be more lenient to your child. But of course she will never find sternness in either you or her father."
"I think not, papa; unless she proves very head-strong; but you surely cannot mean to advise us not to require the prompt, cheerful, implicit obedience you have always exacted from all your children?"
"No, daughter; though you might sometimes excuse or pardon a little forgetfulness when the order has not been of vital importance," he answered, with a smile.
There was a moment's silence: then looking affectionately into her father's face, Elsie said, "I am so glad, papa, that we have had this talk. Edward and I have had several on the same subject (for we are very, very anxious to train our little one aright); and I find that we all agree. But you must be tired acting the part of nurse. Please lay her in my arms."
"I am not tired, but I see you want her," he answered with a smile, doing as she requested.
"Ah, you precious wee pet! you lovely, lovely little darling!" the young mother said, clasping her child to her bosom, and softly kissing the velvet cheek. "Papa, is she really beautiful? or is it only the mother love that makes her so in my eyes?"
"No; she is really a remarkably beautiful babe. Strangers pronounce her so as well as ourselves. Do you feel quite strong enough to hold her?"
"Oh, yes, sir; yes, indeed! The doctor says he thinks there would now be no danger in my lifting her, but——" laughingly, and with a fond look up into her husband's eyes, as at that moment he entered the room, "that old tyrant is so fearful of an injury to this piece of his personal property, that he won't let me."
"That old tyrant, eh?" he repeated, stooping to take a kiss from the sweet lips, and to bestow one on the wee face resting on her bosom.
"Yes, you know you are," she answered, her eyes contradicting her words; "the idea of you forbidding me to lift my own baby!"
"My baby, my little friend," he said gayly.
Elsie laughed a low, silvery, happy laugh, musical as a chime of bells. "Our baby," she corrected. "But you have not spoken to papa."
"Ah, we said good-morning out in the avenue. Dinsmore, since we are all three here together now, suppose we get Elsie's decision in regard to that matter we were consulting about."
"Very well."
"What matter?" she asked, looking a little curious.
"A business affair," replied her husband, taking a seat by her side.
"I have a very good offer for your New Orleans property, daughter," said Mr. Dinsmore; "shall I accept it?"
"Do you think it advisable, papa? and you, Edward? I have great confidence in your judgments."
"We do; we think the money could be better and more safely invested in foreign stock; but it is for you to decide, as the property