Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/154

Rh ideal—to be her father's prop and comfort. In very truth she was the foundation of his home. Her young shoulders took the responsibility of life upon them early. With the little money he allowed her, she set the domestic wheels in motion, and they never creaked. He stinted and saved, keeping the house from every luxury, grudging himself, and therefore her, everything save the barest necessities. And why? Because he was laying by a fortune in her name.

He was her ideal; she worshipped him as only those who are young enough to keep an ideal can. She would sit in the room watching him work, never knowing his work was one that would leave him free, when finished, to go from her for ever. Yet that was the day he longed and prayed for over his papers. She thought him completely happy, in his quiet way. And when a friend once said in her presence, "Since he came from India he has been a broken man," it came upon her with a shock. Was there any side of him she did not know—something a stranger would notice and not herself, she who had lived beside him for years? She watched him closely, but could