more anxious to know just how much of the
trouble she had taken in. I suppose it was all a kind of awful mystery
to her, as most of our trials are to children; but when her father was
taken from her, she seemed to think it was something she mustn't ask
about; there are a good many things in the world that children feel that
way about--how they come into it, for one thing, and how they go out of
it; and by and by she didn't speak of it. She had some of his lightness,
and I presume that helped her through; I was afraid it did sometimes.
Then, at other times, I thought she had got the notion he was in for
life, and that was the reason she didn't speak of him; she had given him
up. Then I used to wonder whether it wasn't my duty to take her to see
him--where he was. But when I came to find out that you had to see them
through the bars, and with the kind of clothes they wear, I felt that I
might as well kill the child at once; it was for her sake I didn't take
her. You may be sure I wasn't anxious for the responsibility of _not_
doing it either, the way I knew I felt toward Mr. Tedham."

I did not like her protesting so much as this; but I saw that it was a
condition of her being able to deal with herself in the matter, and I
had no doubt she was telling the truth.

"You never can know just how much of a thing children have taken in, or
how much they have understood," she continued, repeating herself, as she
did throughout, "and I had to keep this in mind when I had my talks with
Fay about her father. She wanted to write to him at first, and of course
I let her--"

My wife and I could not forbear exchanging a glance of intelligence,
which Mrs. Hasketh intercepted.

"I presume he told you?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "he showed us the letter."

"Well, it was something that had to be done. As long as she questioned
me about him, I put her off the best way I could, and after a while she
seemed to give up questioning me of her own accord. Perhaps she really
began to understand it, or some of the cruel little things she played
with said something. I was always afraid of the other children throwing
it up to her, and that was one reason we went away for three or four
years and let our place here."

"I didn't know you were gone," I said toward Hasketh, who cleared his
throat to explain:

"I had some interests at that time in Canada. We were at Quebec."

"It shows what a rush our life is," I philosophized, with the
implica