a tray. 'Stop a moment,' said she, 'we must
keep his little clothes clean;' and tied a napkin under his chin, in a
very methodical manner.

While he took his supper, Bella sat by him, sometimes admonishing him
to hold his fork by the handle, like a polite child, and at other times
carving for him, or pouring out his drink. Fantastic as it all was, and
accustomed as she ever had been to make a plaything of her good father,
ever delighted that she should put him to that account, still there was
an occasional something on Bella's part that was new. It could not be
said that she was less playful, whimsical, or natural, than she always
had been; but it seemed, her husband thought, as if there were some
rather graver reason than he had supposed for what she had so lately
said, and as if throughout all this, there were glimpses of an
underlying seriousness.

It was a circumstance in support of this view of the case, that when she
had lighted her father's pipe, and mixed him his glass of grog, she sat
down on a stool between her father and her husband, leaning her arm upon
the latter, and was very quiet. So quiet, that when her father rose to
take his leave, she looked round with a start, as if she had forgotten
his being there.

'You go a little way with Pa, John?'

'Yes, my dear. Do you?'

'I have not written to Lizzie Hexam since I wrote and told her that I
really had a lover--a whole one. I have often thought I would like to
tell her how right she was when she pretended to read in the live coals
that I would go through fire and water for him. I am in the humour to
tell her so to-night, John, and I'll stay at home and do it.'

'You are tired.'

'Not at all tired, John dear, but in the humour to write to Lizzie. Good
night, dear Pa. Good night, you dear, good, gentle Pa!'

Left to herself she sat down to write, and wrote Lizzie a long letter.
She had but completed it and read it over, when her husband came back.
'You are just in time, sir,' said Bella; 'I am going to give you your
first curtain lecture. It shall be a parlour-curtain lecture. You shall
take this chair of mine when I have folded my letter, and I will take
the stool (though you ought to take it, I can tell you, sir, if it's
the stool of repentance), and you'll soon find yourself taken to task
soundly.'

Her letter folded, sealed, and directed, and her pen wiped, and her
middle finger wiped, and her desk locked up and put away, and these
transactions