Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/147

 Ethel Free7)ian,

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��more like a veritable pack of wolves than their prototypes in larger cities do — she heard a shrill childish voice, "O there's mamma, there's mamma ! " Little Florence was there with her father, waiting for her, and at once Ethel discovered a change in the child ; she did not look less strong, but her face wore an expression that had never been there before, a haunt- ed, scared, almost agonized look, the look that a creature battling with a sorrow it could hardly comprehend might wear. It made her mother clasp her in sudden fear, and in sharp self-reproach that she had left her.

The meeting between husband and wife was constrained as their parting had been, though it was evident to both that the other made an effort to seem unaffectedly glad and happy. Ethel would have been so but that a strange dread at Florry's looks drove all other feelings from her heart. She made no effort to discover what was troubling her during the day, but when she took her on her lap at night the child could restrain herself no longer. She burst into a tempest of sobs, and wept until Ethel was seri- ously alarmed. "Tell me what is the matter, darling," she said ; and as soon as Florry could control her voice, between gasping sobs, she told the story of her trouble, a trouble that froze her mother's heart as she lis- tened.

Florry had begged Mrs. Hamilton to come often to the house to see her while her mother was away, and Ethel had requested her to come there to use her piano for her daily practising, and to read in the library whenever she wished. She had been there oft-

��en, especially at twilight, so Florry could hear her sing beautiful songs and ballads before she retired. Her father enjoyed it too, and Florry had been so happy, until one night, that dreadful night, when she sat in the library listening to her singing in the parlor, as Ethel had done the night she resolved she would go away. Mrs. Hamilton seemed sad, " lone- some," Florry said, and sang such sad verses — Ethel knew how she sang them, O so well ! — that she cried there alone in the half darkness. Then she left off singing, and she and her father fell to talking vaguely, Florry listening not with the least in- tent of meanness, but for the sake of hearing the pleasant voice she loved so well.

Florry was a precocious child. Her mother had made her much a com- panion, and she had ever been her father's favorite among his children. She understood the feelings and emo- tions of grown people better than is usual with children much older, so was at no loss to repeat intelligently, with full perception of its meaning, the conversation of that dreadful evening. They spoke of her mother, Mrs. Hamilton affectionately, "but as though she sort of pitied you," Florry said, and her father "as if he hadn't any patience." " Then they talked on a long time, and papa told her how that you and he ought never to have got married, and how that you never were fitted for each other. And he told Mrs. Hamilton that he wished she were his wife, and how that life would seem like heaven if that were so. And then she said that it would seem so to her too, and how that she was very unhappy,

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