thes
that lay by his bedside were indeed a little threadbare, but sound and
spotless. The hat that hung in the passage below might have been much
shabbier without necessarily indicating poverty. His walking-stick had a
gold knob like any earl's. If he did choose to smoke a church-warden, he
had a great silver-mounted meerschaum on his mantle-shelf. True, the
butcher's shop had for some time contributed nothing to his dinners, but
his vegetable diet agreed with him. He would himself have given any man
time, would as soon have taken his child by the throat as his debtor,
had worshiped God after a bettering fashion for forty years at least,
and yet would not give God time to do His best for him--the best that
perfect love, and power limited only by the lack of full consent in the
man himself, could do.

His daughter always came into his room the first thing in the morning.
It was plain to her that he had been more restless than usual, and at
sight of his glazy red-rimmed eyes and gray face, her heart sank within
her. For a moment she was half angry with him, thinking in herself that
if she believed as he did, she would never trouble her heart about any
thing: her head should do all the business. But with his faith, she
would have done just the same as he, It is one thing to be so used to
certain statements and modes of thought that you take all for true, and
quite another so to believe the heart of it all, that you are in
essential and imperturbable peace and gladness because of it. But oh,
how the poor girl sighed for the freedom of a God to trust in! She could
content herself with the husks the swine ate, if she only knew that a
Father sat at the home-heart of the universe, wanting to have her.
Faithful in her faithlessness, she did her best to comfort her
_believing_ father: beyond the love that offered it, she had but cold
comfort to give. He did not listen to a word she said, and she left him
at last with a sigh, and went to get him his breakfast. When she
returned, she brought him his letters with his tea and toast. He told
her to take them away: she might open them herself if she liked; they
could be nothing but bills! She might take the tray too; he did not want
any breakfast: what right had he to eat what he had no money to pay for!
There would be a long bill at the baker's next! What right had any one
to live on other people! Dorothy told him she paid for every loaf as it
came, and that there was no bill at the b