The Colonel laughed aloud. “You wily little natural lawyer!” he said; but immediately became very grave, for underneath this burst of half angry amusement Bee had given him a shock she did not know of. All unaware of the edge of the weapons which she used with a certain instinctive deftness, it did not occur to her that these words of hers might penetrate not only deeper than she thought, but far deeper than her own thoughts had ever gone. His wife’s worn face seemed suddenly to appear before Colonel Kingsward’s eyes in a light which he had never seen before, and the argument which this child used so keenly, yet so ignorantly, pierced him like a knife. “Without mamma to speak for me!” These words sounded very simple to Bee, a mischievous expedient to trap him in the snare he had laid for her. But if the time should ever come when they should be true! The Colonel was struck down by that arrow flown at a venture. He went back to his table subdued, and sat down there. “That will do,” he said, “that will do. Now run away and leave me to my work, Bee.” She came up to him and gave him a timid kiss, which the Colonel accepted quietly in the softening of that thought. She roamed about the table a little, flicking off an imperceptible speck of dust with her handkerchief, arranging some books upon the upper shelf of his bureau, sometimes looking at him over that row of books, sometimes lingering behind him as if doing something there. He did not interfere with her movements for a few minutes, in the _attendrissement_ of his thoughts. Without a mother to speak for her! Poor little girl, if that should ever be so! Poor little children unconscious in their nursery crying for mamma; and, oh, worse than all, himself without his Lucy, who had made all the world sweet to him! He was a masterfull man, who would stand to his arms in any circumstances, who would not give in even if his heart was broken; but what a strange, dull, gloomy world it would be to him if the children had no mother to speak for them! He made a sudden effort to shake off that thought, and the first thing that recalled him to himself was to hear Bee, having no other mischief, he supposed, to turn her hand to, heaping coals upon the little bit of fire which had been lighted for cheerfulness only. “Bee,” he cried, “are you still there? What are you doing? The room is like an oven already, and you are making up a sort of Christmas fire.” “Oh, I am so sorry--I forgot,” cried Bee, putting down the shovel hastily. “I thought it wanted mending--for you always like a good fire.” “Not in September,” he said, “and such weather; the finest we have had since July. Come, cease this fluttering about--you disturb me--and I have a hundred things to do.”