others.

All the guests left the next morning, excepting the Carringtons and
Caroline Howard, and the house seemed very quiet--even in Elsie's room,
where the little girls were sewing--while Harry and Herbert took turns in
reading aloud; and in this way they passed the remainder of their visit
very pleasantly, indeed.

Elsie felt her confinement more when Sabbath morning came, and she could
not go to church, than she had at all before. Her father offered to stay
at home with her, remarking that she must feel very lonely now that all
her little mates were gone; but she begged him to go to church, saying
that she could employ herself in reading while he was away, and that
would keep her from being lonely, and then they could have all the
afternoon and evening together. So he kissed her good-bye, and left her
in Chloe's care.

She was sitting on his knee that evening; she had been singing hymns--he
accompanying her sweet treble with his deep bass notes; then for a while
she had talked to him in her own simple, childlike way, of what she had
been reading in her Bible and the "Pilgrim's Progress," asking him a
question now and then, which, with all his learning and worldly wisdom,
he was scarcely as capable of answering as herself. But now she had been
for some minutes sitting perfectly silent, her head resting upon his
breast, and her eyes cast down, as if in deep thought,

He had been studying with some curiosity the expression of the little
face, which was much graver than its wont, and at length he startled her
from her reverie with the question, "What is my little girl thinking
about?"