“Papa, I am not a child, to be coaxed into forgetfulness; why will you not trust me?  I am older than Sophie was when you took her in where I have not been; why will you not make me your friend?”—­and some sudden collision of watery powers among the window-drops, whether from accretion or otherwise, sent a glistening rivulet down to the barrier of the sash.

Papa folded his arms, and looked at me.  I could not bear to be thus shut out.  I said so.

“Could you bear to be shut in?” he thought, and asked it.

“I think I could.  I could bear anything that you gave me; I could keep anything that you intrusted to my keeping.”

Papa looked at me as one does at a cherished vine the outermost edges of which are just frost-touched; then he folded me to his heart.  I felt the throbbings thereof, and mine began to regret that I had intruded into the vestibule of his sacred temple; but a certain something went whispering within me, “You can feed the sacred fire,” and I whispered to the whispering voice, and to my father’s ear,—­

“You’ll take me in, won’t you?”

“Come,” was the only spoken word.

The room was not cheery; he felt it, and said,—­

“You see what the effect is when my Myrtle-Vine is off my walls;” and he tossed aside books and papers that had evidently been astray for days, and lay now in his way.

Papa took a key (he wears it too, it seems:  that is even more than I do with my tower’s) from a tiny chain of gold about his neck, and unlocked the door connecting this silent room with his own.  He went in, leaving me outside.  He lighted a candle and left it burning there.  He came, took my hand, and, with the leading whereby we guide a child, conducted me in thither.  Then he went out and left me standing, bewildered, there.

I had anticipated something wonderful.  What was here?  It was a silent room.  The carpet had a river-pattern meandering over its dark-blue ground:  it must have been years since a broom went over it.  Strange medley of furniture was here.  I looked upon the walls.  Pictures that must have come from another race and generation hung there.  There were many of them.  One side of the room held one only.  It was a portrait.  I remembered the original in life.  “My mother,” I exclaimed.  In the room’s centre, surrounded by various articles, was the very boat that I knew Mary Percival had guided out to sea to save Abraham Axtell.  Two tiny oars lay across it.  The paint was faded; the seams were open; it would hold water no longer.  A sense of worship filled me.  I looked up at the portrait.  My mother smiled:  or was it my fancy?  Fancy undoubtedly; but fancies give comfort sometimes.  I looked again at the boat.  On its stern, in small, golden letters, was the name, “Blessing of the Bay,” the very name given to the first boat built after the Mayflower’s keel touched America’s shore.  “The name was a good omen,” I thought.  An armchair stood before the portrait.  A shawl was spread over it.  I lifted up the fringe to see what the shawl covered.  Papa had come in.