A Dark Nights Work | Page 7

thought as to the effect on her, hitherto
shut up in the nursery during this busy day of confusion and alarm. The
child had no idea of death, and her father, kneeling and tearless, was far
less an object of surprise or interest to her than her mother, lying still
and white, and not turning her head to smile at her darling.
"Mamma! mamma!" cried the child, in shapeless terror. But the mother
never stirred; and the father hid his face yet deeper in the bedclothes, to
stifle a cry as if a sharp knife had pierced his heart. The child forced her
impetuous way from her attendants, and rushed to the bed. Undeterred
by deadly cold or stony immobility, she kissed the lips and stroked the
glossy raven hair, murmuring sweet words of wild love, such as had
passed between the mother and child often and often when no witnesses
were by; and altogether seemed so nearly beside herself in an agony of
love and terror, that Edward arose, and softly taking her in his arms,
bore her away, lying back like one dead (so exhausted was she by the
terrible emotion they had forced on her childish heart), into his study, a
little room opening out of the grand library, where on happy evenings,
never to come again, he and his wife were wont to retire to have coffee
together, and then perhaps stroll out of the glass-door into the open air,
the shrubbery, the fields--never more to be trodden by those dear feet.
What passed between father and child in this seclusion none could tell.
Late in the evening Ellinor's supper was sent for, and the servant who
brought it in saw the child lying as one dead in her father's arms, and
before he left the room watched his master feeding her, the girl of six
years of age, with as tender care as if she had been a baby of six
months.
CHAPTER III.

From that time the tie between father and daughter grew very strong
and tender indeed. Ellinor, it is true, divided her affection between her
baby sister and her papa; but he, caring little for babies, had only a
theoretic regard for his younger child, while the elder absorbed all his

love. Every day that he dined at home Ellinor was placed opposite to
him while he ate his late dinner; she sat where her mother had done
during the meal, although she had dined and even supped some time
before on the more primitive nursery fare. It was half pitiful, half
amusing, to see the little girl's grave, thoughtful ways and modes of
speech, as if trying to act up to the dignity of her place as her father's
companion, till sometimes the little head nodded off to slumber in the
middle of lisping some wise little speech. "Old-fashioned," the nurses
called her, and prophesied that she would not live long in consequence
of her old- fashionedness. But instead of the fulfilment of this prophecy,
the fat bright baby was seized with fits, and was well, ill, and dead in a
day! Ellinor's grief was something alarming, from its quietness and
concealment. She waited till she was left--as she thought--alone at
nights, and then sobbed and cried her passionate cry for "Baby, baby,
come back to me--come back;" till every one feared for the health of
the frail little girl whose childish affections had had to stand two such
shocks. Her father put aside all business, all pleasure of every kind, to
win his darling from her grief. No mother could have done more, no
tenderest nurse done half so much as Mr. Wilkins then did for Ellinor.
If it had not been for him she would have just died of her grief. As it
was, she overcame it--but slowly, wearily--hardly letting herself love
anyone for some time, as if she instinctively feared lest all her strong
attachments should find a sudden end in death. Her love-- thus dammed
up into a small space--at last burst its banks, and overflowed on her
father. It was a rich reward to him for all his care of her, and he took
delight--perhaps a selfish delight--in all the many pretty ways she
perpetually found of convincing him, if he had needed conviction, that
he was ever the first object with her. The nurse told him that half an
hour or so before the earliest time at which he could be expected home
in the evenings, Miss Ellinor began to fold up her doll's things and lull
the inanimate treasure to sleep. Then she would sit and listen with an
intensity of attention for his footstep. Once the nurse had expressed
some wonder at the distance at which Ellinor could hear her father's
approach, saying