“No, Miss Louisa,” answered Sissy, upon this encouragement, shaking her head; “father knows very little indeed. It’s as much as he can do to write; and it’s more than people in general can do to read his writing. Though it’s plain to me .”

“Your mother?”

“Father says she was quite a scholar. She died when I was born. She was;” Sissy made the terrible communication nervously; “she was a dancer.”

“Did your father love her?” Louisa asked these questions with a strong, wild, wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a banished creature, and hiding in solitary places.

“O yes! As dearly as he loves me. Father loved me, first, for her sake. He carried me about with him when I was quite a baby. We have never been asunder from that time.”