aria.
Evelyn, darling, speak to Irene. I hear her in the dining-room."

Evelyn obeyed, and Harry gave his orders that dinner should be served
as soon as possible. The girl smiled at him with a coquettish air.

"Irene is pleasanter to papa than to anybody else," Evelyn observed,
meditatively, when Irene had gone out. "I guess girls are apt to be
pleasanter to gentlemen than to little girls."

Harry laughed and kissed the child's high forehead. "Little girls are
just as well off if they don't study out other people's peculiarities
too much," he said.

"They are very interesting," said Evelyn, with an odd look at him,
yet an entirely innocent look.

Maria was secretly glad that this first evening She was not there,
that she could dine alone with her father and Evelyn. It was a drop
of comfort, and yet the awful knell never ceased ringing in her
ears--"Father is going to die, father is going to die." Maria made an
effort to eat, because her father watched her anxiously.

"You are not as stout as you were when you went away, precious," he
said.

"I am perfectly well," said Maria.

"Well, I must say you do look well," said Harry, looking admiringly
at her. He admired his little Evelyn, but no other face in the world
upon which he was soon to close his eyes forever was quite so
beautiful to him as Maria's. "You look very much as your own mother
used to do," he said.

"Was Maria's mamma prettier than my mamma?" asked Evelyn, calmly,
without the least jealousy. She looked scrutinizingly at Maria, then
at her father. "I think Maria is a good deal prettier than mamma, and
I suppose, of course, her mamma must have been better-looking than
mine," said she, answering her own question, to Harry's relief. But
she straightway followed one embarrassing question with another. "Did
you love Maria's mamma better than you do my mamma?" she asked.

Maria came to her father's relief. "That is not a question for little
girls to ask, dear," said she.

"I don't see why," said Evelyn. "Little girls ought to know things. I
supposed that was why I was a little girl, in order to learn to know
everything. I should have been born grown up if it hadn't been for
that."

"But you must not ask such questions, precious," said Maria. "When
you are grown up you will see why."

Harry insisted upon Evelyn's going to bed directly after dinner,
although she pleaded hard to be allowed to sit up until her mother
returned. Harry wished for at least