Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/140

130 comfort me." She put her little hands about his neck, and, with the instinctive gesture of a mother hushing her babe, pressed his face upon her tiny breast.

"Poor father!" she said; "I will sing you to sleep."

She started a lullaby in a high, childish treble, which, after a few spasmodic efforts to continue, wavered off into silence.

When she woke it was morning; she dressed with speed and impatience. A new responsibility had dawned upon her. No doll had ever been added to her over-numerous family that had given her thoughts so deep as these. There had been a last letter from that dear dream-mother, and in it she had written, "I shall be always with you, though you will not see me." "Always with her," Angela thought; she who had been so far away: she who had been invisible for years—nearer, though invisible still. Then in the letter she had also read, "Comfort your father; be good to him: his is a deep and terrible trouble."

Yes! that was the sentence that thrilled her. Here was responsibility! All the