Her mother had died at her birth, and she had been her father's treasure; but in the last period of his illness she had seen less of him, and the blank left by his death had, therefore, come upon her gradually.

Before she knew what it was, she had begun to forget.

In the minds of children the grass grows very quickly over their buried dead.

But now she learned what death meant, or rather what love had been; not, however, as an added grief: it comforted her to remember how her father had loved her; and she said her prayers the oftener, because they seemed to go somewhere near the place where her father was.

She did not think of her father being where God was, but of God being where her father was.
The winter was drawing nearer too, and the days were now short and cold.