And, to prove how well she could pray, she put her two hands together, hung down her head, and whispered: “Dod bless dear mamma and Nelly. Dod bless little Nelly’s dear papa.” She looked up coyly, as though ashamed. Dear reader, smile not at these simple words, nor think them puerile. When we behold a little child praying, we know how the angels worship God. A sob broke from Holdsworth as she ceased. Who was little Nelly’s dear papa but he? His wife’s love had dictated that prayer, and it was their child who told him of her love. Ah! God had deigned to hear that prayer, whispered by a wife’s heart through the lips of her infant, and had blessed him with this knowledge of her devotion, and had brought him from afar to know it. No; not want of love had made her faithless to his memory. Faithless she was not--she could not be if her heart nightly spoke to God of him through her child. Let him look at the little girl now; let him feel the fulness of the love she inspired in him; let him imagine that he was desolate and friendless, and in want, and that this frail flower, this tender little lamb, pined and grew wan and ragged for food and raiment; let him mingle with his own emotion the pain and torment which a mother’s heart would feel in the presence of this baby’s sufferings; and then let him condemn his wife, if he could, for sacrificing her memories and accepting food and shelter from any hand that offered them under any honourable conditions. He could not speak again for some time; and Nelly, growing tired of sitting, slipped from his knee, and betook herself to her toys. Then his eyes kindled anew, and he watched her eagerly. He longed to ask her questions--to hear her lisp him sweet assurances of his Dolly’s love--to learn from her little lips that her mother was his, had been, would always be his, though separated from him by a barrier as formidable as death. But there was no question he could put which the child might not repeat again; for, backward as she was in speech, her small imperfect language would be intelligible enough to the mother. His curiosity would be too unnatural in a stranger not to excite Dolly’s suspicions; and if they should not even lead to the discovery of his secret, they might be the means of breaking off all intercourse between him and his child. And so he remained silent; and presently, as he sat watching the little creature pushing her doll to and fro in the cart and talking to herself, a calm came upon his heart--a sense of exquisite repose and security. You would have said, to look upon him and remark the placid sweetness that reigned in his face, that the child’s prayer had veritably done its office--that God had blessed him indeed.