"They haven't half put the paper on," said her father. "Didn't half paste it, I suppose. You can't trust anybody unless you are right at their heels. Confound 'em! There, I've got to go round and blow 'em up to-morrow, before I go to the city." Then Maria spoke. "I tore that paper off, father," said she. Harry turned and stared at her. His face went white. For a second he thought the child was out of her senses. "What?" he said. "I tore that paper off," repeated Maria. "You? Why?" The double question seemed to hit the child like a pistol-shot, but she did not flinch. "Mother never had paper as pretty as this," she said, "nor new furniture." Her eyes met her father's with indescribable reproach. Harry looked at her with almost horror. For the moment the child's eyes looked like her dead mother's, her voice sounded like her's. He continued gazing at her. "I couldn't bear it," said Maria. "She" [she meant Mrs. Addix] "was asleep. I was all alone. I got to thinking. I came in here and tore it off." Harry heaved a deep sigh. He did not look nor was he in the least angry. "I know your poor mother didn't have much," said he. He sighed again. Then he put his arm around Maria and kissed her. "You can have your room newly papered now, if you want it," said he, in a choking voice. "Father will send you over to Ellisville to-morrow with Mrs. White, and you can pick out some paper your own self, and father will have it put right on." "I don't care about any," said Maria, and she began to sob. "Father's baby," said Harry. She felt his chest heave, and realized that her father was weeping as well as she. "Oh, father, I don't want new paper," she sobbed out, convulsively. "Mother picked out that on my room, and--and--I am sorry I tore this off." "Never mind, darling," said Harry. He almost carried the child back to her own room. "Now get to bed as soon as you can, dear," he said. After Maria, trembling and tearful, had undressed and was in bed, her father came back into the room. He held a small lamp in one hand, and a tumbler with some wine in the other. "Here is some of the wine your mother had," said Harry. "Now I want you to sit right up and drink this." "I--don't want it, father," gasped Maria. "Sit right up and drink it." Maria sat up. The tumbler was a third full, and the wine was an old port. Maria drank it. Immediately her head began to swim; she felt in a sort of daze when her father kissed her, and bade her lie still and go right to sleep, and went out of the room. She heard him, with sharpened hearing, enter her mother's room. She remembered about the paper, and the new furniture, and how she was to have a new mother, and how she had torn the paper, and how her own mother had never had such things, but she remembered through a delicious haze. She felt a charming warmth pervade all her veins. She was no longer unhappy. Nothing seemed to matter. She soon fell asleep.