Interrupted

ich so much had been planned-Claire was awakened by a quick, decisive k

you to come right away, and brin

lasted. She called to mind the story Nettie Stuart had told her that afternoon, how "papa was so ill the night before that they really thought he would die, and everybody in the house was up waiting on him." Yet "papa" had been at the bank that next d

ncouraging thoughts to Dora,

, and mamma needs us to help care for him. You know she is not feeling so well as usual. She promised to call me the n

e she believed there was no cause for alarm. Her hand was on her mother's doorknob,

ightly lighted. "O, children, children, you are too late! Oh, why"-and she fell senseless at their feet; and Claire was bending over her, lifting

who had kissed them and bade them look out for a bright to-morrow, had gone away, and taken all the brightness of the to-morrow with him. At first they could not believe it possible. Father dead!

ouder, and the father went to answer to it. Well for him that he had long before made ready for this journey, a

, again and again, the d

head is clearer. He was very earnest about it, and asked me to kneel down with him, and he prayed again for you, dear girls, and for me, a wonderful prayer. It wasn't like any that I ever heard before. Oh, I might have known then that it was to prepare me; but I didn't think of such a thing. I asked him if he felt well, and he said, oh, yes, only more tired than usual; it had been a hard day, and there were busin

er to the bell; and Thomas was quick, too, but it seemed an age. The moment I had a glimpse of your father's f

uld give themselves to soothing words and tender kisses, and put aside as best they cou

me moves along steadily, after the object for

was too closely identified with all the business interests of the city, as well as with its moral and re

tified with them; stores were closed, because crape waved from the doors of his, the largest in the line. The First National Bank was closed, for he was one of the Directors. The p

the prayer-room, they were draped in mourning

, his lips tremulous; "we have need to throw them more widely ope

many men and women and children. They began to see that they had not half realized his power in the community, as young men in plain, sometimes rough dress, men whose names they had never heard, and whose faces they had never

sometimes becomes an awful word, with power to torture the torn heart almost to madness. "Why was father, a man so good, so true, so grand, so sadly needed in this wicked world, snatched from it just in the prime of his power?" She brooded over this in silence and in secr

nderstand w

know. She hoped not; she was sorry she had spoken. B

, he said you needed more self-reliance; that you had too many props, and depended on them. He might have said the same of me; I depended on him more than I knew. He said you needed to be thrust out a littl

ire sat in startled silence for a fe

seem almost never to come in detached wave

ess than a week after the father had been laid i

else seems heavy. Things that troubled me last week seem so utterly foolish to-day. I don'

ght of that sentence again with a so

ecause of the other one, and followed hard after it. Business men tried to explain matters to the widow. A peculiar complication of circumstances existed, which called for her husband's clear brain and wise handling. Had he lived, all would hav

s gone, tried to understand the bewilderments which, one after another, were presented to her, and grew less and less able to take in the meaning of the great wor

ward from her obscurity in the back

s terms; my father never burdened her with them. Will you let m

ong them said he feared-that is, it was believed-it seemed to be almost certai

o glow on Claire's cheeks, but she held

dy think that my father

at her, "people say such things sometime

emen could be

the sunlight, and the fact was, he had periled his own fortune in a dangerous time, to help others wh

estion

sufferers throug

hey, however, finally admitted, to each other, that there was property enough to cover everybody's los

one thing-that no person shall lose a penny through our father's loss, if we can help it. Now, may

front, said to each other that Benedict had left a splendid girl, with

to desert, and leave her helpless, than she did when she controlled her own dismay, and helped her mother to bed, and sat beside her, and bathe

as few girls cry; as Claire Benedict

nd fairly frightened her, there stole suddenly into her heart the memory of t