“No, indeed!  I thought they were the longest days I’d ever lived, and wondered how I could ever have thought I’d like to be my own mistress instead of having to obey papa.

“He didn’t give me one cross word or even look, but he didn’t invite me to sit on his knee, and I didn’t dare do so; he didn’t call me pet names and hug me up in his arms, as he so often does when I haven’t been naughty, and I couldn’t wait on him as I always love to do; he wouldn’t let me do the least thing for him.  I just felt as if I wasn’t one of the family at all, and would ten times rather have had the hardest of whippings; at least so far as the pain was concerned.”

“Yes, of course; it wouldn’t have been half so hard to bear.  At least I can imagine that to be made to feel yourself only a stranger in your father’s house would be a great deal worse than having to endure quite severe bodily pain.  So I think you may feel that you have been punished.”

“Not so severely as I deserve,” returned Lulu, shaking her head and sighing; “no not half.  There, I can hear Gracie calling me to say good-night.  Excuse me while I run into her room for a few minutes.”

She found Grace alone and just getting into bed.

“Where’s papa?” Lulu asked.

“Gone down stairs; but he said he’d be back in a few minutes to have his bit of chat with you in our sitting-room.”

“Then I’ll just kiss you good night and hurry back to get ready for him.”

When the captain came he found Lulu ready and waiting for him, seated by the fire with her Bible open in her hand.

“I was learning my verse for to-morrow morning, papa,” she said, closing the book and laying it aside, as she rose to give him the easy chair she had been occupying.

“That was right,” he replied, sitting down and drawing her to his knee; “one could hardly end the old year, or begin the new, in a better way than by the study of God’s word.  Well, has my little daughter anything particular to say to her father to-night?”

“Only that I wish I’d been a better daughter to you, papa, and that I hope I shall be this—­no next year:  the year that’s to begin in a few hours.  I do hope that when its last night comes you can say, ’My daughter Lulu hasn’t been once disobedient or in a passion for a whole year.’”

“It will be a very happy thing for me—­for us both—­if I can,” he said, “and I am not without hope that it may be so.  But my dear child, you will need constant watchfulness lest your besetting sins overcome you when you least expect it.”

“I wish I could ever get done with the fight,” she sighed.  “It’s such a hard one.”

“Yes, I know, dear child, for I am engaged in the same conflict; but we must keep on resolutely till the dear Master calls us home.

“But we have the promise of His help all the way, and that we shall be ‘more than conquerors through Him that loved us.’  And the prize is eternal life at God’s right hand.”