"Father's baby," said Harry.

She felt his chest heave, and realized that her father was weeping as
well as she.

"Oh, father, I don't want new paper," she sobbed out, convulsively.
"Mother picked out that on my room, and--and--I am sorry I tore this
off."

"Never mind, darling," said Harry. He almost carried the child back
to her own room. "Now get to bed as soon as you can, dear," he said.

After Maria, trembling and tearful, had undressed and was in bed, her
father came back into the room. He held a small lamp in one hand, and
a tumbler with some wine in the other.

"Here is some of the wine your mother had," said Harry. "Now I want
you to sit right up and drink this."

"I--don't want it, father," gasped Maria.

"Sit right up and drink it."

Maria sat up. The tumbler was a third full, and the wine was an old
port. Maria drank it. Immediately her head began to swim; she felt in
a sort of daze when her father kissed her, and bade her lie still and
go right to sleep, and went out of the room. She heard him, with
sharpened hearing, enter her mother's room. She remembered about the
paper, and the new furniture, and how she was to have a new mother,
and how she had torn the paper, and how her own mother had never had