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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.'

'Yet he leaves you now, Sissy?'

'Only for my good. Nobody understands him as I do; nobody knows
him as I do. When he left me for my good - he never would have
left me for his own - I know he was almost broken-hearted with the
trial. He will not be happy for a single minute, till he comes
back.'

'Tell me more about him,' said Louisa, 'I will never ask you again.
Where did you live?'

'We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to live in.
Father's a;' Sissy whispered the awful word, 'a clown.'

'To make the people laugh?' said Louisa, with a nod of
intelligence.

'Yes. But they wouldn't laugh sometimes, and then father cried.
Lately, they very often wouldn't laugh, and he used to come home
despairing. Father's not like most. Those who didn't know him as
well as I do, and didn't love him as dearly as I do, might believe
he was not quite right. Sometimes they played tricks upon him; but
they never knew how he felt them, and shrunk up, when he was alone
with me. He was far, far timider than they thought!'

'And you were his comfort through everything?'

She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. 'I hope so, and
father said I was. It was because he grew so scared and trembling,
and because he felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless
man (those used to be his words), that he wanted me so much to know
a great deal, and be different from him. I used to read to him to
cheer his courage, and he was very fond of that. They were wrong
books - I am never to speak of them here - but we didn't know there
was any harm in them.'

'And he liked them?' said Louisa, with a searching gaze on Sissy
all this time.

'O very much! They kept him, many times, from what did him real
harm. And often and often of a night, he used to forget all his
troubles in wondering whether the Sultan would let the lady go on
with the story, or would have her head cut off before it was
finished.'

'And your father was always kind? To the last?' asked Louisa
contravening the great principle, and wondering very much.

'Always, always!' returned Sissy, clasping her hands. 'Kinder and
kinder than I can tell. He was angry only one night, and that was
not to me, but Merrylegs. Merrylegs;' she whispered the awful
fact; 'is his performing dog.'

'Why was he angry with the dog?' Louisa demanded.

'Father, soon after they came home from performing, told Merrylegs

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