Nelly steals away from you gently, and stepping across the room, lays
her hand upon his shoulder with a touch that says, as plainly as words
could say it,--"We are here, father!"

And he rouses himself,--passes his arm around her,--looks in her face
fondly,--draws her to him, and prints a kiss upon her forehead.

"Nelly, we must love each other now more than ever."

Nelly's lips tremble, but she cannot answer; a tear or two go stealing
down her cheek.

You approach them; and your father takes your hand again with a firm
grasp,--looks at you thoughtfully,--drops his eyes upon the fire, and
for a moment there is a pause;--"We are quite alone now, my boy!"

----It is a Broken Home!

VI.

_Family Confidence._

Grief has a strange power in opening the hearts of those who sorrow in
common. The father, who has seemed to you, not so much neglectful, as
careless of your aims and purposes,--toward whom there have been in your
younger years yearnings of affection which his chilliness of manner has
seemed to repress, now grows under the sad light of the broken household
into a friend. The heart feels a joy it cannot express, in its freedom
to love and to cherish. There is a pleasure wholly new to you in telling
him of your youthful projects, in listening to his questionings, in
seeking his opinions, and in yielding to his judgment.

It is a sad thing for the child, and quite as sad for the parent, when
this confidence is unknown. Many and many a time with a bursting heart
you have longed to tell him of some boyish grief, or to ask his guidance
out of some boyish trouble; but at the first sight of that calm,
inflexible face, and at the first sound of his measured words, your
enthusiastic yearnings toward his love and his counsels have all turned
back upon your eager and sorrowing heart, and you have gone away to
hide in secret the tears which the lack of his sympathy has wrung from
your soul.

But now over the tomb of her, for whom you weep in common, there is a
new light breaking; and your only fear is lest you weary him with what
may seem a barren show of your confidence.

Nelly too is nearer now than ever; and with her you have no fears of
your extravagance; you listen delightfully there by the evening flame to
all that she tells you of the neighbors of your boyhood. You shudder
somewhat at her genial praises of the blue-eyed Madge,--a shudder that
you can hardly account for, and which you do not seek to exp