“Hush!” said Susy, “there’s father’s step.” Mr. Wade had come up to get his soft lamb’s-wool slippers for Mr. Doe, that gentleman having experienced a chill in his left toe joint. “Playing top,” said he, contemptuously, looking at Neddy; “at your age, sir, I was wheeling stone for a mason, in the day-time, and studying arithmetic evenings. Where’s your Daboll, sir? Study your pound and pence table; that’s what’s to be the making of you; how do you expect to become a man of business without that? You’ll never drive a good bargain--you’ll be cheated out of your eye-teeth. Get your Daboll, sir, and Susy, do you hear him say it. Tops are for babies, sir; a boy of your age ought to be almost as much a man as his father. How should I look playing top? God didn’t make the world to play in.” And Mr. Wade and his lamb’s-wool slippers slipped down stairs. “He didn’t make it for a work-shop either,” thought Susy, as she took down the offensive Daboll. They to whom the word father comprises all that is reverent, tender, companionable and sweet, may refuse to recognize the features of this portrait as a true likeness of the relation for which it stands; they may well doubt--they whose every childish hope and fear was freely confided to a pitying, loving, sympathizing heart--they whose generous impulses were never chilled by the undeserved breath of suspicion and distrust--they whose overflowing love was never turned back in a lava tide to devastate their fresh young hearts--happy they for whom memory daguerreotypes no such mournful picture! Still, let them not for that reason doubt, that through the length and breadth of the land, are men and women who look back sorrowing on what they might have been, _but for their blighted childhood_! “Blessed night!” the words often fell from Mrs. Wade’s lips, as she closed her chamber-door, and, laying her weary head upon her pillow, sought oblivion in sleep. “Blessed night;” the children did not hear it, for whose sakes she often repressed the rising sigh, and sent back to their fountain the scalding tears, and whose future, as her health and strength declined, she would have trembled to contemplate, but for her faith in God. He did not hear it--one kind word from whom, one look, or smile, to say that he appreciated all her untiring efforts, would have brought back the roses of health to that faded cheek. He did not hear it, as he sat there over the midnight-fire, with groaning Mr. Doe, ringing the changes on dollars and cents, dollars and cents, which had come between him and the priceless love of those warm hearts. Ay--Blessed night! CHAPTER IV.