eserve
to stay there all night.

But at last she heard his step, and then he opened the door and called,
"Elsie!"

"Yes, papa, I am here," she replied in a trembling voice, full of tears.

"Come to me," he said; and then, as he took her hand, "Why, how cold you
are, child," he exclaimed; "I am really sorry you have been so long in
that dismal place. I did not intend to punish you so severely, and should
not have kept you there more than half an hour, at the _very longest_;
but company came in, and I quite forgot you."

While speaking thus he had led her up to the fire and sat down with her
on his knee. "My poor darling!" he said, "these little hands are very
cold, let papa rub them; and are your feet cold too?"

"Yes sir," she replied, and he pulled off her shoes and stockings, and
moving his chair closer to the fire, held her feet out toward the blaze,
and rubbed them in his warm hands.

"You have been crying a good deal," he said, looking keenly into her
face.

"Yes, papa," she replied, dropping her face on his breast and bursting
into tears; "I thought you were going to leave me there all night."

"Did you? and were you afraid?"

"No, papa, not _afraid_, because I know you would be sleeping in the next
room; and besides, God could take care of me as well in the closet as
anywhere else. Is it getting night, papa, or morning?"

"It is beginning to grow dark," he said. "But tell me why you cried, if
you were not afraid."

"Partly because I was uncomfortable, papa, but more because I was sorry
I had been naughty, and displeased you, and afraid that I can never learn
to be good."

"It is very strange," he remarked, "that you cannot learn not to ask to
do what I have forbidden. I shall have to punish you every time you do
it; for you _must_ learn that no _means no_, and that you are never to
coax or tease after papa has once said it. I love my little girl very
dearly, and want to do all I can to make her happy, but I must have her
entirely submissive and obedient to me. But stop crying now," he added,
wiping her eyes with his handkerchief. "Kiss me, and tell me you are
going to be a good girl, and I will forgive you this time."

"I will try, papa," she said, holding up her face for the kiss; "and I
would not have asked to play that, but the children begged me so, and
I thought you only said I mustn't, because you didn't want me to sit on
the floor; and we were going to try it on the table."

"Did I give t