“Suppose he should die, poor papa, all by himself?  Squire says he is very, very sick.”

“God forbid!” cried Mrs. Marsden, “God forbid.”

“If papa has come all the way down to Kentucky,” continued Roberta, “I don’t believe he came down here just to fight us, I don’t indeed.  It looks to me more like he is hunting for somebody.  And who should that somebody be but my own darling mamma?”

“It isn’t probable he is hunting me, darling.  It has been ten long years since he went away.  He knows where the old place is.  He could have found me easily enough.”

“Well, but may be he wasn’t exactly sure about you wanting him to come.  He might have wanted ever so bad to come himself, and yet been afraid you didn’t want him.  I wouldn’t go where I wasn’t sure I was wanted,” continued the child, a fine scorn curving her lips, “no, not for any thing.”

How much she looked like her father when she said that.

“May I go, Mamma?” she coaxed again.  “Say yes, dear Mamma.  You don’t know how I’ve longed to have a papa like other little girls.”

Then the sorely tried heart gave a great leap and got way beyond self.

“Yes, you may go, darling,” she cried; “and may the God of the pure in heart watch over you and bring you back safely to your lonely mother.”

The child coddled down again to her.

“What must I tell him for you, Mamma?” she asked.

Mrs. Marsden started.  She had not expected that.

“Send him kind message, Mamma, just like your own sweet self.  You are so good to everybody, and he is your little daughter’s papa, and you love him dearly, don’t you, dear Mamma?”

Then the woman-heart gave a great leap and reached out to that other heart the child was pleading for, and it seemed as if they touched, although miles separated them, and pride lay prostrate.

“I have erred,” she reasoned dumbly, “erred in the sight of God and man.  I have been hard, hard.  What right have I to hold him to so strict an account?  By my own contrition and unutterable yearning to behold his face, will I judge him, and naught else, the husband of my youth, once the delight of my eyes.”

Then, having gone thus far, she could stop at nothing.  Her eyes shone, varying emotions chased over her beautiful face, her whole nature unbent, tender, as when she stood in that room in the old days and heard the benediction that pronounced them man and wife.

“O, you dear child!” she cried, “surely God has put in your little hands the gift of healing.  Tell him, tell him, your Father, that for ten long years, the string has been on the outside of the latch for him.  Tell him”—­then, utterly unable to say more, she bowed her head and wept.  Roberta clung to her and caressed her.  That phase of her mother’s character touched her unspeakably, young as she was.  She never forgot it.  It was a revelation of how blessed a possession is the heart that is incapable of cherishing resentment.