"Live upon you, my dear lad!" he exclaimed loftily. "No; I will perish first!"
"There is enough for all, sir," replied Dan. "Do not go. I would take from you--indeed, indeed I would!--could we change places. And there is Minnie, sir,"--with such a wistful tender glance towards Minnie, who was growing very beautiful,--"what would she do? But not for her nor for you do I ask this, sir. It is for me; for Ellen and Susan and Joshua. How happy he will be to find you here when he returns! You and Minnie, that he talked of so often, and with such affection! Then think, sir. You would not like to be the means of breaking up our little happy circle; and it is happy, isn't it, Minnie?"
"Ah, yes, Dan!" replied Minnie, with an anxious look at her father. "Only one is wanting to make it perfect."
"And that one is Joshua," said Dan, divining whom she meant, and grateful to her for the thought.
"And that one is Joshua," she repeated softly, placing her shell to his ear. "Do you hear it? Is it not sweet, the singing of the sea?"
But all argument and entreaty would have been thrown away upon Basil if it had not been for Minnie. It was she who, when they were alone, prevailed upon him to stay.
"Your mother suffered for me and died for me," he said to her, as he lay upon his bed of pain. "How like her you are growing, Minnie! Well, well, one is enough. I will stay, child, for your sake."
And she kissed him and thanked him, and whispered that he had made her happy.
The next day she told Dan in a whisper that father was not going away; and Dan clapped his hands, and quietly said, "Bravo!"
"And Joshua used to speak about us?" she remarked, with assumed carelessness.
"Ah if you had only heard him! You know what a voice he has--like music."
A sudden flush in her face, a rapid beating at her heart, a rush of tears to her eyes. None of which did Dan notice, for her eyes were towards the ground. A little while afterwards she was singing about the house as blithe as a bird. Dan, stopping in the midst of his work, listened to the soft rustle of her dress in the passage, and to her soft singing as she went up the stairs; and a grateful look stole into his eyes.
"Not to hear that!" he said. "Ah, it would be worse than death! But she is going to stay, birdie," nodding gayly to one of his pets; "she is going to stay!"