“Don’t think what? pappy dear,” she said, coming closer to him and putting one arm round his neck, while with her other she stroked his thin grey hair. “I only am thinking what a bad naughty pappy it has been, when it could talk like that, and knew all these things, never to let poor little me know anything about it. To think that all these years this bad thing should have hidden what it really was, and let me have my own way, and be mistress, and scold it and talk to it as if it were a child, when it was all the time so clever and wise. Naughty, naughty pappy.” Carry talked playfully, but it was evident that she was very much in earnest, for the tears stood in her eyes. “No, no, Carry, whatever you do, do not think that I was ever as I was to-night; do not think that the one you have always known is a pretence, and that this one was the real thing. I was never like that. Do not think that misfortune,—you know I was better off once—has so changed me that I have become what I am from that. I never was so, dear; I might have been so, but I never was. Had I always been as you just saw me we should not be here as we are now, and all would have been quite different; but that other nature went away when I was quite little, scared by harsh treatment, and never came back again except for a little little time till to-night. Why it did come back to-night I cannot say, only to raise doubts between my child and me,” and Stephen Walker wrung his hands in feeble despair. “No, no, father dear,” Carry said, throwing her arms round his neck and kissing him, “not doubts. I was very pleased and proud, but very surprised too, to hear my old pappy talk like that, and a little ashamed when I thought how much I had underrated you. Not that I should have loved you more, had you been the cleverest man in the world, not one bit more; but I should have looked up to you more, and felt somehow differently towards you.” “That is just it,” Stephen Walker said, helplessly; “she would have felt differently. She is not going to be my little Carry any more. That other one has come in between us, and frightened her away.” “No, no, pappy,” Carry said coaxingly, and seating herself upon his knees, “this is your little Carry, is it not? There, look up, and don’t hang your naughty head down. Is not this little Carry? Come, speak, sir, or I shall scold you dreadfully.”