dded 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 that she had listened and could not hear a sound, to
which Ellinor had replied:

"Of course you cannot; he is not your papa!"

Then, when he went away in the morning, after he had kissed her, Ellinor
would run to a certain window from which she could watch him up the lane,
now hidden behind a hedge, now reappearing through an open space, again
out of sight, till he reached a great old beech-tree, where for an
instant more she saw him. And then she would turn away with a sigh,
sometimes reassuring her unspoken fears by saying softly to herself,

"He wi