Page:Varia.djvu/110

 98 knows her father "is not a Christian," and that she "listens with pain" to his unprincipled conjecture that when a man leads an honest, upright, moral life, is regular in his attendance at church, and observes all the laws, he probably goes to heaven. This sanguine statement is as reprehensible to Elsie as it would have been to the Fairchild family; and when Mr. Dinsmore—a harmless, but very foolish and consequential person—is taken ill, his little daughter pours out her heart "in agonizing supplication that her dear, dear papa might be spared, at least until he was fit to go to Heaven."

A few old-fashioned people will consider this mental attitude an unwholesome one for a child, and will perhaps be of the opinion that it is better for a little girl to do something moderately naughty herself than to judge her parents so severely. But Elsie is a young Rhadamanthus, from whose verdicts there is no appeal. She sees with dismay her father amusing himself with a novel on Sunday, and begs at once that she may recite to him some verses. Forgetful of her principles, he asks her, when convalescing from his