"Father, I--I'm with you--I'll stop with you," cried Rosa, shaken by his plaint. What awful things he imagined, poor, unhappy man. "I'll help you. And the Lord will help you, and His most Holy Mother Mary," she added solemnly, and made the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast as well as on her own. "May the Lord help you and us." And then she said resolutely and courageously--what was the good of hesitating? Had she not promised Mikolai to do it and also prayed about it?--"What you've been saying is not true, daddy. Nobody is going to do you any [Pg 299] harm, neither mother nor anybody eke. You're not kind to mother. You're talking nonsense. Look, here is your Röschen, feel my hands." She put her dry, burning hands round his wrists. "As true as I stand here, I swear that you've nothing to fear, we all lov----"--no, she must not lie, so she quickly corrected herself--"we all mean you well. Daddy, oh, my daddy!" She let go of his wrists and impulsively pressed her hands to his cheeks, as she had so often done when she was small and her fingers had seemed no bigger than the legs of a fly that played about on his fat cheeks. "Oh, my dear daddy, if only you would stop drinking. Everything, everything would be better then. Then mother would no longer"--she suddenly stopped and the colour mounted to her brow; she did not mention her mother again. But her voice sounded so honest and convincing as she continued, "Then you would never have cause to fear any more. You would see then that nobody wishes you ill. And how happy Mikolai would be if you were to go into the stables and fields again, and talk to him about the work on the farm. Poor Mikolai, his friend is going away and he'll be so lonely. And you would feel much better yourself. You wouldn't cough so much--Marianna says you spit blood--you would be happy again; you wouldn't sit alone in this room any more, and you would see the wheat and the oats and the red clover that smells so sweet. Just think of it, daddy!" She grew quite hot in her eagerness; at that moment she forgot all about her convent and that she would not be at Starydwór to see the improvement. And then as the last and best promise she said, "And you would still be saved, daddy; God in heaven would forgive your sins." Her eyes shone as she looked at [Pg 300] him, as though she wanted to infect him with some of her own radiant happiness. But his eyes did not shine. He was looking down in a dull-witted way and merely muttered, "Yes, you're Rosa."