Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/295

Rh "I have only heard the children's story," my wife said. "And of course it looks bad, the wife leaving him; he must have a bad temper."

"Yes," I said. "Yes, it's funny that a mother should leave all her children behind. You have never met her?"

"No," my wife answered thoughtfully; "but I respect her. It's better if things are going badly between husband and wife that they should separate. It's awful for the children when there is constant bickering and quarrelling going on around them; but it would take a great deal to make a mother leave her children."

My wife looked, with her heart in her eyes, towards the other end of the room, where our one dear child was playing. I caught her in my arms, and drew her down upon my knee.

"And what do you know of bickering and quarrelling, uncharitable little wife?" I said; and Milly came like a small whirlwind upon us.

"Let me come up, too, father!" she cried in peals of laughter.

I was nearly smothered between them.

In the midst of the frolic Agnes Barrington