nd as for the cooking,
you can see that I shall love to do that. You know Aunt Catherine
used to let me cook, that I always like to."

Carroll made no reply.

"Papa, you are not well; you are all worn out," Charlotte said. "Let
us go into the den, and you smoke a cigar and I will read to you."

Carroll shook his head. "No, dear, not to-night," he said.

"We will have a game of cribbage."

"No, dear, not to-night. You are tired, and you must go to bed. Take
a book and go to bed and read. You are tired."

"I am not very tired," said Charlotte, but therein she did not speak
the entire truth. Her spirit was leaping with happy buoyancy, but she
could scarcely stand on her feet, she was so fatigued with her
unaccustomed labor and the excitement of it all. There was a ringing
in her ears, and her eyelids felt stiff; she was also a little
hoarse. "Will you go to bed, too, papa?" said she, anxiously.

"I will go very soon, dear."

"Won't you want anything else before you go?"

"No, darling."

Charlotte stood regarding him with the sweetest expression of
protection and worshipful affection, and withal the naivete of a
child pleased with herself and what she has done for the beloved one.
"You _did_ have a good supper, didn't you, papa?" she asked.

"A beautiful supper, sweetheart."

"You never had a better?"

"Never so good, never half so good," said Carroll, fervently, smiling
down at her eager face.

"You are glad I came back, aren't you, papa?"

"Glad for my own sake, God knows, dear, but--"

"There are no buts at all," Charlotte cried, laughing. "No buts at
all. If you don't think I am happier and better off here with you
than I would be rattling down to Kentucky on that old railroad, and I
am always car-sick on a long journey, you know, papa."

Charlotte lit a lamp and bade her father good-night. She kissed him
and looked at him anxiously and with a little bewilderment. He had
seated himself, and was smoking with an abstracted air, his eyes
fixed on vacancy.

"Now, papa, you will go to bed very soon yourself, won't you?" she
urged. "You look sick, and I know you are tired out."

"Very soon, honey," Carroll replied.

After Charlotte had gotten into bed, and lay there with her lamp on a
stand beside her and her book in hand, she listened more than she
read. When in the course of half an hour she heard her father come up
the stairs and enter his own room, she gave a sigh of relief.
"Good-night, papa,"