Elsie grew calmer as she listened to her nurse's words; her sobs and
tears gradually ceased, and at length she allowed Chloe to bathe her
face, and smooth her disordered hair and dress; but she refused to eat,
and lay on her couch all the afternoon, with a very sad little face, a
sob now and then bursting from her bosom, and a tear trickling down her
cheek. When the tea-bell rang, she reluctantly yielded to Chloe's
persuasions, and went down. But it was a sad, uncomfortable meal to her,
for she soon perceived, from the cold and averted looks of the whole
family, that the cause of her banishment from her papa's room was known.
Even her Aunt Adelaide, who was usually so kind, now seemed determined
to take no notice of her, and before the meal was half over, Enna,
frowning at her across the table, exclaimed in a loud, angry tone,
"Naughty, bad girl! Brother Horace ought to whip you!"

"That he ought," added her grandfather, severely, "if he had the strength
to do it; but he is not likely to gain it, while worried with such a
perverse, disobedient child."

Elsie could not swallow another mouthful, for the choking sensation in
her throat; and it cost her a hard struggle to keep back the tears that
seemed determined to force their way down her cheek at Enna's unkind
speech; but the concluding sentence of her grandfather's remark caused
her to start and tremble with fear on her father's account; yet she
could not command her voice sufficiently to speak and ask if he were
worse.

There was, indeed, a very unfavorable change in Mr. Dinsmore, and he was
really more alarmingly ill than he had been at all. Elsie's resistance
to his authority had excited him so much as to bring on a return of his