"No, dear, not to-night. You are tired, and you must go to bed. Take a book and go to bed and read. You are tired." "I am not very tired," said Charlotte, but therein she did not speak the entire truth. Her spirit was leaping with happy buoyancy, but she could scarcely stand on her feet, she was so fatigued with her unaccustomed labor and the excitement of it all. There was a ringing in her ears, and her eyelids felt stiff; she was also a little hoarse. "Will you go to bed, too, papa?" said she, anxiously. "I will go very soon, dear." "Won't you want anything else before you go?" "No, darling." Charlotte stood regarding him with the sweetest expression of protection and worshipful affection, and withal the naivete of a child pleased with herself and what she has done for the beloved one. "You _did_ have a good supper, didn't you, papa?" she asked. "A beautiful supper, sweetheart." "You never had a better?" "Never so good, never half so good," said Carroll, fervently, smiling down at her eager face. "You are glad I came back, aren't you, papa?" "Glad for my own sake, God knows, dear, but--" "There are no buts at all," Charlotte cried, laughing. "No buts at all. If you don't think I am happier and better off here with you than I would be rattling down to Kentucky on that old railroad, and I am always car-sick on a long journey, you know, papa." Charlotte lit a lamp and bade her father good-night. She kissed him and looked at him anxiously and with a little bewilderment. He had seated himself, and was smoking with an abstracted air, his eyes fixed on vacancy. "Now, papa, you will go to bed very soon yourself, won't you?" she urged. "You look sick, and I know you are tired out." "Very soon, honey," Carroll replied. After Charlotte had gotten into bed, and lay there with her lamp on a stand beside her and her book in hand, she listened more than she read. When in the course of half an hour she heard her father come up the stairs and enter his own room, she gave a sigh of relief. "Good-night, papa," she called out. "Good-night, dear," he responded. Then Charlotte fell asleep with her light burning and her book in her hand, and she did not hear her father go softly over the stairs a second time.