Page:Between Two Loves.djvu/57

52 For Jonathan loved his daughter very tenderly, and her little joyful cry of "Father! father!" still echoed in his memory. He looked around his lonely, silent rooms, and remembered how bright and gay they had been during the few happy years when she had held a kind of court in them. Nothing that his friend had said had helped him much, yet it had been some comfort to talk of his trouble to one whom he knew to be both wise and faithful. Still, at the end of an hour's conversation little had been gained, and as their friendship had no pretences, Ben said, as he was leaving, "I hevn't done thee any good;" and Jonathan answered, "No, thou hesn't. I didn't expect it."

"Varry well, then, thou knows Who can do thee good, and if I'd been thee I would hev gone to Him first off."

And Jonathan bent his head in reply, and then went to his lonely room, where he sat still, brooding over his heavy thoughts for some time. For, though he kept saying to himself, "It's only a bit of a tiff and most couples have them," he could not get rid of a presentiment that he had entered into the chill of a long-shadowed sorrow. But when he rose up from