"Ah, don't be angry with him," said Mr. Dinsmore; "I was the culprit. You
cannot have forgotten your fall from the piano-stool which came so near
making me childless? It was he who ran in first, lifted you, and laid you
on the sofa with the blood streaming from the wounded temple over your
curls and your white dress. Ah, I can never forget the sad sight, or the
pang that shot through my heart with the thought that you were dead. It
was as he laid you down that Travilla turned to me with those indignant
words, and I felt that I fully deserved them. And yet I was even more
cruel afterwards, when next you refused to obey when I bade you offend
against your conscience."
"Don't let us think or talk of it any more, dear father; I love far better
to dwell upon the long years that followed, full of the tenderest care and
kindness. You certainly can find nothing to blame yourself with in them."
"Yes; I governed you too much. It would probably have ruined a less
amiable temper, a less loving heart, than yours. It is well for parents to
be sometimes a little blind to trivial faults. And I was so strict, so
stern, so arbitrary, so severe. My dear, be more lenient to your child.
But of course she will never find sternness in either you or her father.
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