"Please stay with us: we'd rather have you, a great deal rather!" He could not resist their entreaties, so sat down, and drew his two little girls into his arms, while Max stationed himself close at his side.
"My dear children," he said, "you can hardly be happier in the prospect before us than your father is." "Is mamma Vi glad ?" asked Lulu.
"Yes; quite as much rejoiced, I think, as any of the rest of us." "But doesn't she want me sent away to school or somewhere ?" with a wistful, anxious gaze into his face.

"Is she willing to have me in the new home, papa ?" "Yes, daughter, more than willing: she wants you to be under your father's constant care and watchfulness, hoping that so he may succeed in teaching you to control your temper." "She's very good and forgiving," was Lulu's comment in a low and not unmoved tone.
"Papa, when will you begin to look for the new home ?" asked Grace, affectionately stroking his cheek and whiskers with her small white hand.
"I have been looking at advertisements," he said; "and, now that baby is out of danger, I shall begin the search in earnest." "Can we afford a big house, and handsome furniture, papa ?" queried Lulu.
"And to keep carriage and riding horses ?" asked Max.
"I hope my children have not been so thoroughly spoiled by living in the midst of wealth and luxury, that they could not content themselves with a moderately large house, and plain furniture ?" he said gravely.
"I'd rather live that way with you, than have all the fine things, and you not with us, dear papa," Lulu said, putting her arm round his neck, and laying her cheek to his.
"I too." "And I," said Max and Grace.
"And I," he responded, smiling affectionately upon them, "would prefer such a home with my children about me, to earth's grandest palace without them.

Millions of money could not buy one of my treasures!" "Not me, papa ?" whispered Lulu tremulously, with her lips close to his ear.
"No, dear child, not even you," he answered, pressing her closer to his side.

"You are no less dear than the others." "I deserve to be," she said with tears in her voice.

"It would be just and right, papa, if you did not love me half so well as any of your other children." She spoke aloud this time, as her father had.
"We all have our faults, Lu," remarked Max, "but papa loves us in spite of them." "'God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,'" quoted the captain.